John the Baptist Denies Being the Messiah | John 1:19-36

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Welcome friends. If you're visiting, my name's Alex. I'm one of the pastors here. Would love to just drop in and say hi to you afterwards, so feel free to come and just. Yeah, just would love to meet you. Just hear a little of your story and how maybe we can help you do what you're doing, which is to live in the way of Jesus with the heart of Jesus.

We use that as a mission statement outside on our wall. And yet the statement simple as it is, like it hides how complicated at times following in the way of Jesus can be. It's a beautiful tension that we're discovering in this book. John we're in our second week. We just spent last week in what's called the prologue.

It soars with this incredible language where John talks about, and Jesus has been significant not because of who he was born to, or what family he was part of, but because he was there in the beginning. There's this story that John leads us into that's just bigger. Than anything we might have imagined.

And now as we start to push him, we're gonna start to get to the narrative sections where we start to see this kind of unfold in actual fact, right at the end, not to spoil it, because you probably know the end. Jesus, John actually says this, Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples.

Which is not recorded in this book, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of garden, that by believing you may have life in His name. The whole of this book is written so people like you and I may have this certainty that Jesus was who he said he was, that we can have confidence in that.

And all the way through this overarching theme just comes up over and over again. It's a gospel for the one. The Jesus that we see in John just deeply cares about individual people. There's less talking to crowds, less big sermons on a mount, more one-on-one experiences encounters with PE. People just like you and me.

And so every passage we come across I'm asking where do I see a tension here in, in how I find it hard to walk in the way of Jesus? Because if we're honest, we all struggle with different parts of that. And so I see here a tension between me and how I see or how I want people to see me and how comfortable the character John the Baptist that we just heard about is with how people see him.

Let me explain. For just a moment. 'cause I think this is bigger than just me. I can remember that distinctly the first time I lied to someone because I wanted them to be impressed with me. Now, psychologically, I can go back into my story and say first born kid, but with a younger brother who was born 16 months later and quickly became like six foot five, which is.

Considerably taller than I am. And having this moment where I was at school and we were about to do our first basketball class. Now in England, basketball's not huge, but it exists. And I remember in the locker rooms get it getting changed and saying to this guy who was next to me, dude, I play basketball all the time.

Yeah. Play for a team top of the league. I'm the star player. All of these things and he's kinda aha, you don't look like you play basketball. I was, maybe the second shortest kid in the class or something, and then he saw me out on the basketball court and then he knew I didn't play basketball.

It was very obvious, very quickly. Somewhere in me, there was this desire to be seen a specific way, and that came out in the language that I use when I talk to people and how I hoped that I could create an image that they would approve from approve of thi This again is a uni verse of problem to a degree.

I'm gonna ask you a question. It's gonna seem like a weird church question to start with but it's part of this big trend going on right now on Instagram, on TikTok. Do you wish. You are athletic. Do you wish you were athletic? Now, if you're someone that's never done ath any athletic kind of things, you might say yeah, of course I wish I was athletic, or, no, I've never had any interest in doing that.

I prefer other things, but when asked to professional football players, it creates some great reactions. So this is the Seattle Seahawks being asked by their communications manager. Do you wish you were f let. So you see these different reactions, right? You see the group of guys that are just like, dude, I am athletic.

There's no question. And then for some of these younger guys, just actually the question of wait. Is this just me? Do you perceive me specifically on this team to be unathletic? And then the guy at the end who, 21-year-old quarterback whose mom must be so proud of him 'cause he has this moment where he says no I wish to be kind.

This has become a movement as it's now asked primarily by wives to their husbands or girlfriends to their boyfriends. And it usually is brilliant when it. A guy who thinks he's athletic but perhaps ha, has some series of doubts about it. One of them asks his boyfriend, her boyfriend if he's athletic, and he says, Hey, I run a 5K.

And she's that was two years ago, and you walked in and it took you an hour. I didn't mean more athletic than a kindergartner. Another guy gets down on the ground and starts doing pushups. Also, he can demonstrate his athleticism. Now, for you it might be not athleticism, but generally I, I think there's this thing that most of us would say.

I, I want people to see that in me. My sense of self-worth hangs on whether they see me as athletic, as attractive, as clever, as a good parent, as a good person, or all sorts of things that if Uras can get very deeply rooted into our psyche and you, when we watch Jesus as he walks this earth as a teacher, he seems what's called in psychology differentiated.

He's very comfortable with who he is and can let go of what other people think of him. And I think we see this in this character, John the Baptist as well. Who has that quality? Richard Foster says this of us today. The heart of God is an open wound of love. He aches over our distance, our preoccupation.

He mourns that we do not draw near to him. He grieves that we have forgotten him. He weeps over obsession with muchness. And many ness, he longs for our presence. And the heartache is if our uncertainty about who we are, our sense of lack of maybe a lack of self-worth, maybe keeps us from the heart of our father.

Who loves us? So let's press into the story, see what we can learn. After the prologue the first 18 verses, those soaring language, the narrative begins and it begins with this character called John the Baptist. Now let me name just the small, at least elephant in the room, which is this. The book is written by a guy called John, and this passage is about a guy called John.

So at some point you might think, is he talking about the author or is he talking about the character? And I'm not gonna remember to prompt you on that every single time. So to a degree you're on your own, but we'll get through it. Together. The gospels all actually begin with this character, John the Baptist.

This kind of wild man who lives out in the wilderness eats. Locust and honey, that's how he survives, has a reputation for saying some wild things in Matthew. It just says, in those days, John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Jude Judea saying, repent for the kingdom of heaven is near in.

Mark a little bit more detail. The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God who is written who as it is written in Isaiah, the prophet, I will send my messenger ahead of you. Who will prepare your way? A voice of one calling in the wilderness. Prepare the way for the Lord. Make straight paths for him.

And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for forgiveness of sins. Luke chapter three In the 15th year of the Reign of Tiberius Caesar, when punches Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod Tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip Teri of EIA and Teka Notice analyst Sinus should have practiced that one Tetrarch of Abilene during the high priesthood of Anus and Caiaphas.

The word of God came to John, son of Zacharia. In the wilderness. All of them start Jesus ministry, if not the whole of their book with this character John the Baptist, and John has actually already sneakily introduced him in the prologue. He's always been also, he is already been introduced as what is called a witness.

This is what the prologue says about him. Verse six and seven. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness testifying concerning that light. So that through him all might believe he himself was not the light. He only came as a witness to the light. So we already have a clue that this person's gonna prompt us towards Jesus.

But this from verse 19, is how it unfolds. Now this was John's testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. Something is going on. In the religion of the day, when a man who lives out in the wilderness, it is so significant that people send people to ask him questions.

As a kind of aside, it's been really interesting to watch over the history of Christianity and Judaism, how sometimes when nothing's happening within organized religion. God will do something outside of the churches and did something outside of the synagogues or temples, and we've seen that all the time through history.

In 1742, a man called John Wesley had begun a movement called Methodism. He had been a Church of England cleric, and during his time preaching, he was going to visit the chapel of which his father had been, the Vico or pastor. His father had died recently, and so John was denied entrance to the chapel.

Instead, he stood on the gravestone of his father outside the church, and hundreds if not thousands of people gathered around him. The vicar of the church came out to ask him, how is it that you can have thousands of people listen to you out in the freezing cold, and I can't get 20 or 30 people to come and listen to me inside the warm building.

And John Wesley, in just a brilliant moment, simply said, God set me on fire. People come to watch me burn. It was an answer for the ages, and just demonstrated how often this kind of thing happens in this moment. John gives a response. He did not fail to confess, John the rider says, but compress freely. I am not the Messiah.

A strange answer it would seem to us in the first century, but in the 21st century. But for a first century audience, longing for some kind of religious moment. He was a natural assumption as being, it was a natural assumption to believe he could be this Messiah figure they'd hoped for. So they ask him.

Second question, then, who are you? Are you Elijah? He said, I am not, there was a legend that before this Messiah, this king would come and rescue the Jewish people, that Elijah would come again and prepare the way for him. They ask him, and John says, no. They ask him, now, are you the prophet? There was another legend back from the book of Deuteronomy that before the Messiah came, a prophet would come to lead the people back to God, and he answers no.

John this figure who is becoming important in his days, asked three times, are you this significant person? And each time he simply says, no, I am not. In actual fact, Jesus is asked another time in another book about John the Baptist and he replies, and if you are willing to accept it, he's Elijah, Eli, the Elijah who was to come.

That's how Jesus saw him, but John didn't see himself. That way. John had a really definite and distinct understanding of what he was called to do and who he was. John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet. I am the voice of Juan calling in the wilderness. Make straight the way for the Lord. In the message version, it says it like this, I am thunder in the desert.

Make the road straight for God. John's understanding of who he is someone preparing the way, making straight the road. Let me give you an example of what this looks like in practice. When I first moved here in 2020. I'd been here a couple of months and I decided to take my family skiing. I've been skiing for a few decades, so I thought this would be a fairly simple process.

Never driven to a ski resort before, so that was new to me. Always just jumped on a bus or something like that, and so I got out my Google Maps app and just put in Keystone Resort and off it went. Just looked fairly simple. I 70 all the way into the mountains. Get off at exit 2 1 6. Oh, and you'll get there soon enough.

Found myself on a little road called Six West, whatever that means, to a place called Loveland Pass, and soon found myself in my. SUV with balding tires, slipping around on the road with three kids in the back trying to find myself to this little place called Keystone. As I got to the peak at the Continental Divide, beca, it started to go downhill.

Wondering why on earth would you be going downhill to a ski resort? Started to have. Crazy Colorado drivers come flying past me at double the speed limit in their Subarus and Toyotas, and finally realized that, that I may be on the wrong road. I don't know what the other road might look like, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't look like this one.

As I'm driving along, I have a couple of thoughts in my mind. Someone should figure out a way to level this out to make it so you can get to the ski resort without going uphill for what seems like a good few miles, and then down for a good few miles. Someone should knock down a mountain, should build up a valley or.

Just build a tunnel. Of course I found that tunnel on the road back and after sitting in a couple of hours of traffic jams thought, I wish I had gone back on Loveland pass. 'cause at least I could keep moving. This is what John is talking about, a leveling process. So there's not roadblocks to the person who is to come.

This is the full verse in Isaiah 40, a voice of one calling in the wilderness. Prepare the way for the Lord. Make straight in the desert highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up. Every mountain and hill be made low. The rough ground should be made level. The rugged places make plain and the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all people will see it together.

For the mouth of the Lord has spoken and John sees himself as a person, he may not be doing that physically. There's actual roads around that have already done that, and actual fact, just down the road from them, there is a place called the King's Highway that is the biggest trade route in the area.

They've seen what it is for someone to come in and physically do this, but he sees himself doing it on a moral level. John's purpose, he says, is simply to make the way straight. Simply wants to make the way straight for the person who is to come after him. And so the questions keep coming. Now, a group called the Pharisees have a question for him.

The Pharisees who had been sent to question him, why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah nor the prophet? And then John makes over the course of three days, that come quick one following another. He makes three announcements. He makes three announcements as to who Jesus is and what people should do.

Next. The first one is here in verses 26 to 29. I baptized with water, but among you stands one who you do not know. He's the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to and tie. This significant religious leader in the first century has already gathered a following around him, says of Jesus, the one who will come after I'm not even worthy.

To fulfill the lowest servant role. For him to remove someone's sandals to unstrap someone's sandals was something that the lowest servant in the household did. And John says, when you compare this person to me, I'm so insignificant. I'm not even worthy to do this. The first announcement looks something like this.

I had a couple of versions of this so you can pick which one you think feels right. The king is on his way, is what John says first. If he's this one who is to prepare a way, the person coming after him is to be a king. Or maybe you phrase it just like this, the king is here. Unknown. Hidden in a crowd, but here are

the next day is the second announcement. 1 29, 31. John saw Jesus coming towards him and said. Look the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is one I meant when I said, a man comes after me. He has surpassed me because he was before me. This is the first moment Jesus himself appears in this gospel, and John has an announcement here, not just the king is here, but this is the king, but a strange kind of king.

Not what was expected. It doesn't look how the people of Israel in the first century would've imagined A king would look, has no visible glory to him, just a man. Preaching. He even uses a title that, for a king, seems a strange title. This is The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Leslie Newgen says this about this statement of Johns, the lands, the lambs slain year by year, each Jewish family would slay a lamb and put it the blood on the.

The doorposts could at best take away the sin of the Jewish worship worshiper. Jesus is the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world in its single and fearful totality. John makes an announcement that this man will die. And he will be the one that takes away the sin of everybody in the world now. Now think about how the story has changed.

For these people listening, they've been told for years a king will come and a messenger will come before him and he'll announce that this king is arriving and then this king in their language will introduce the day of the Lord. This day of reckoning. When all of the nation of Israel's enemies would be laid to waste and maybe some of those in Israel would be laid to waste.

The day of the Lord was synonymous with judgment, with death, and who didn't die in amongst all those people that might die, the one who brought the day of the Lord God did not die in the day of the Lord. And now John is speaking of this one who will follow a as a lamb that will die. John talks a little further about what he has seen in this Jesus.

I saw the spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him, and I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, the man on whom you see the spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. I have seen, and I testified, that this is God's chosen one.

And then we get the next day, the third announcement, and this is the one that really surprises me. This is the one that I don't think you expect to take place. He's already announced the king is coming or the king is here. He announces that Jesus is this king that they've been waiting for. And then John is with two of his disciples and he says, when he saw Jesus passing, he said, look, the lamb of God.

When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Something about the way John says what he says gives the inference that now it's time to leave John and go follow a new rabbi, a new teacher. Day one, the king is here. Day two. This is the king. Day three follow the king. And they do. And that for a first century rabbi is the opposite of what you'd expect.

A rabbi lived or died by the people that followed them. That was the way that you knew that your teachings would get passed on. It was so practical to follow a rabbi in the first century that if that rabbi walked with a limp, his disciples would walk with a limp as well. If that rabbi walked one mile in a day and the rabbi, the students would work, walk one mile in a day, and what that rabbi taught his student students would teach as well.

And the teaching will get passed on to a new generation. And John has his disciples and simply says to them, it's time to follow someone else. This is the one. Follow him. And they do think about it in our culture, this is a Mr. Beast, as he is known, the first person to have 400 million subscribers. On YouTube, he has parlayed those 400 million subscribers into a billion dollars of wealth at the age of 28.

It's one of the most extraordinary visuals of what's happening with a whole different like marketing strategy in our century, in our time, I imagine if his language, when someone else appeared on YouTube or whatever platform is to say something like, you're really following the wrong guy. Go follow somebody else.

It is just not what you expect from people. It's not what you expect from John the Baptist in, in actual fact, this is the best picture I could get of these guys 'cause they lived a long time ago, like second century. You see the generation before Jesus and John, there were two famous rabbis, Hillel and Sham.

They'd had back and forth battles as to what scripture meant, and they'd both become very significant, pass their teachings on to group of disciples and almost coexisted together. They had great friendships between them, between the group around them. It seems in their context, there's plenty of room for everyone to keep doing their teaching, but John doesn't see the relationship between him and Jesus like that.

It's not a conversation between equals. John sees Jesus emergence and sees that Jesus is significant beyond the level of just a teacher. He means something. Something has changed distinctly. Now, Jesus is on the scene. What John has isn't knowledge. He simply says that God has shown me. This and this idea of revelation has been consistent across the Christian story for a couple of thousand years.

It's not enough to just simply have information about Jesus. Somewhere you and I are supposed to know deep inside us who he is. It's a prayer that I began praying for students when I was back in Michigan 10 years ago. It's a prayer that I pray now today. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know him better.

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and is in comparably great power for us who believe. That's what John decides. In a world that just like today was measured by what you achieved and how people saw you, what John says is how people see me doesn't matter at all.

My only interest is actually in how people see Jesus simply point the way to him. John surrenders to a Jesus centered life and as I began, that's what we say on the wall when you walk in. But it's way harder than it sounds when you read it. A couple of quotes that just made me think, 'cause I was processing this is Elizabeth Elliot who went with a husband out into some of the wilderness of South America.

A husband was killed by a tribe of Indians that had never experienced Western people. And so she and the other wives went back to those people to tell them that Jesus loved them despite what had happened to their husbands. She said one does not surrender a life in an instant. That which is lifelong can only be surrendered in a lifetime.

Richard Rohr says this, the ego, the interior part of us hates losing even to God. It's actually hard to surrender all the things you want to be who you are. To point people towards Jesus. It's hard to say all of the things that I hope to achieve, perhaps money, perhaps success don't actually matter in the way that I've been told they are.

In actual fact, when you look at what the teaching around following Jesus is, it almost always comes back to surrender. Can you simply hold loosely all the things that you want and all the things. That you have. There's a great conversation that Ronald Rolls Rohe records about a young man who goes to a father, a priest, to ask some advice.

He says to him this, do you still wrestle with the devil Father Arias? I asked him, not any longer my child. I have grown old now, and he has grown old with me. He doesn't have the strength. I wrestle with God. With God, I exclaimed in astonishment and you hope to win. Know my son. I hope to lose. That's what surrender looks like.

It's wrestling with what we dream for our life and what God dreams for our life. And John the Baptist is this beautiful, exemplary moment right at the start of John's gospel of one who says simply what my story looks like. He is nowhere near as important as what a life lived pointing people to Jesus looks like we are all witnesses like John.

It's a idea that comes up again in acts, but the word witness doesn't really get to the heart of what the Greek word witness means. The Greek word for witness is marious. That's what we get our word martyr. And when you think about the history of this church and all those people that have laid down their lives and said, simply, I want to be whatever you want me to be, God.

And even if that means death, I can go that journey with you. One of the cultures we hope to create at South is not necessarily one that means that you will die for your faith. Although, who knows there are no promises on the table. But we've tried to create this culture where everybody believes they have a part to play in this.

It doesn't mean that you necessarily have to give up everything to be involved in it. In actual fact, that's a conversation just between you and God. But one of the essential ideas behind this place called South is that everyone has something to do and there's a couple of questions that might help you get there.

The first question I think is good. The second question I think is even better. The first question is, what brings you joy? Or what can you get involved with that actually gives you this sense of just joy and goodness? What is it that you love? How does the need of the church, the need of the world, meet that sense of joy?

Those are good questions to ask but there's another question that I think looks a little different to that. Where do you feel called? Lemme tell you a really short story that illustrates that for just a moment. Years ago, my place of serving was worship. Now if you've heard me sing, you know it wasn't singing, but I was a musician in the worship team and I loved it.

I would play and I would get to watch everyone as they worship. I'd get to sit in those moments as people's lives were trans transformed. And then a friend came to me and said, I feel like I, I'd like to invite you into something. Have you ever thought about working with students? And my honest answer was, I've never in my life thought about working with students, but he was a friend.

And so I jumped into it and it turned out he said, you seem to connect really well with this kind of age group. He's like some kind of common maturity or something like that. And then he asked me to start preaching. He start, he asking me to think about how. You might talk about scripture in front of other people, and I did that and he said, I love how you have these ideas around that.

Here's what I think is true for you. It's time to let go of the worship thing. It's time to invest in your calling. It took me a ages to wrestle with that. It was a hard thing to lay down, and yet it led me exactly to where God wanted me to be led me actually to this moment. Today it led me to this sense of purpose, this sense of calling.

We are witnesses when it says in acts, God raised from the Jesus, from raised this Jesus to life. We are all witnesses of it. Participate not for you is what does that look like? Your life's calling may take you into places that make you richer, may take you into places that make you poorer. It may take you into places where you live far from here, may take you into places where you never leave.

Littleton may take you into places with many relationships, may take you into places with few, but somewhere in the midst of all the things your life might be, your calling, and my calling is to point people to Jesus to make straight the way, because that is who we are. We are all witnesses at Jesus in the midst of life that offers so much, so many possibilities.

We heard some of those stories of those football players who revel in the gift of athleticism and everything they're doing right now. And then we heard that one distinct voice that said simply, this is just a short term thing. Does it matter In the end, we get to ask questions like that together. We get the joy of following you, Jesus, the gift of new life.

And we get to play a part. So God, for each of us in the midst of asking, how do we get involved, speak to us, we follow in the Jesus way. And that looks a lot like what John did. Less worried about what we will do and what people will think of us. And more interest in what they will think about you. Amen.