John the Baptist & Living as God's Witnesses

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Rev. Christian B Creyer

Sermon • Submitted 4 years ago • Presented 4 years ago • 14:52

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Let us pray…Gracious and forgiving God, as we move into this time of reflection this morning, open our hearts, open our minds, and open our spirits to hear only your voice in our ears and hearts this day…speak into our hearts with your soft, still-speaking voice, Amen.

A brief intro...

As we begin this morning, I want to set the stage a bit…last week we talked about the baptism of Christ and as a way to study that more deeply, I invited you into a time of reflection and discussion together. I pray that you took some time throughout this past week to reflect on what it means for Christ to have been baptized by John in the Jordan River. As we approach this Sunday’s reading, we are probably no more than a few days after, maybe even the next day after John baptized Jesus and we encounter John and a few of his disciples sitting next to the Sea of Galilee. What this means for us is that John’s disciples, let me make this clear, we are talking about the disciples who have been taught and lead by John the Baptist, are gathered as Jesus comes walking by. This is important to remember because what ultimately happens is that John points his own followers to follow Christ…John points others to the one who is, was, and always be the only who could provide them with the things they needed to point others to follow as well.

What we have in this story is Jesus exploring the area around the Sea of Galilee. As he is journeying through the area this day, he once again encounters his cousin John and John’s followers. And this is where we begin this morning...what we hear first is John saying something very important about Jesus…he says,

John 1:29 NLT

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!

Let’s think about this for a second and put this into perspective…John the Baptist is the first person, according to John the beloved disciple, who recognizes and witnesses to Jesus’ ministry and purpose to and in the world. Unfortunately, John the Baptist gets a bad rep because we so easily imagine him as some wild-eyed, disheveled, crazy man walking around out in the desert. And I say it’s easy to imagine him like that because of the descriptions we get of him from the Bible… we know he wore animal skins, he ate locusts and honey, and he did his ministry in the wilderness… the desolate places… the less than civilized places. Here’s the thing though, we learn something really important things from this realization. We humans look on the outward appearance of someone and cast a judgement based upon what we see. But the point we need to learn the most is that God does not look at our outside but rather looks at the heart of each of us.

What we value vs. What God values...

You see, we place way too much value on outward appearances. You know, there are some churches that will not allow a pastor or lay leader into the pulpit unless that person is wearing the proper attire...can you imagine someone saying that to John the Baptist? In my mind, it might sound a little something like this...“Ok, John, so we know that you’re Jesus’ cousin, and that you’re the forerunner of Christ, and we’ve asked you to give the message to our congregation…but um, we have a concern...where’s your suit? Wait, what? No suit, you say, only animal skins? I’m sorry John, we can’t let you get up in-front of the congregation wearing those animal skins it’s just not proper.” I mean really? Can you imagine that happening? The problem is that it happens more often than we would like to admit. We, meaning humans as a whole with no exceptions when it comes to Christians, are really quick to judge people by what they look like and what they wear. I want to remind us that, that’s not what God does. God looks only into our hearts to know where our hearts truly reside.

So John the Baptist’s ministry is incredibly important, and amazing, and valuable, because God called him to it, not his human contemporaries but God…and it is also really important because he gets to point us toward Christ. Just like what Christ has called all of us to do in today’s world…so, what I want all of you to go home with this day is this:

Who’s pointing you toward Christ? Who’s pointing you away from Christ?

I really believe this is the crux of this story and it is the crux of everything we should be doing in this world…John the Baptist has lead several men and taught them for a period time. He spent time turning people toward God and repentance but now that Christ has entered the picture and John has baptized him, John’s words of reflection on himself give us an idea of what his purpose is in the world. In my mind, John’s real purpose was to point toward Christ and his teachings for the world of then and now…and it is also our purpose to point others to know God through Christ.

Let’s take a little bit of a deeper look at what John is saying in this passage, and he says it twice, not just once but twice which means that it is important for us to remember that John called Jesus...

“The Lamb of God”

Now John couldn’t have said anything more profound and more impactful than this. Especially to those who were gathered around him, especially those who believed they knew all there was to know about God, the Levites and Priests. If you think about it, their tribe has spent generations… generation after generation, after generation, sacrificing lambs on the altar for the atonement of sins. They did this because their sacrificial laws required it. Year, after year, hundreds of lambs were brought into the Temple to be killed and burned on the Altar of God as a way to remove some of their sins. But now John says to them. “All of that is done! It’s over! There will be no more need for that soon. Because this man who you see – HE IS THE LAMB OF GOD! He takes away the sin of the world! Those lambs that you sacrifice year after year, they were just a substitute… a picture. They were pointing to Jesus!”

John is pointing them to Christ. And it doesn’t matter that they’re priests or Levites or anyone else for that matter because all were required to sacrifice something to atone for their sins… he is pointing them to Christ. Church; I think we all understand that it’s possible for a person to sit in a congregation and still be lost. It’s possible for a person to put on their Sunday morning mask, and speak the Christian lingo, and still be lost. These Levites, despite all their religious tradition, and despite all their religious activity… they didn’t know Jesus. And they didn’t want Jesus. Religious activity, meaning sitting in church every Sunday, or saying the words over and over again, or even acting one way here in these walls and the very minute we step outside them, we are someone different, these are not what make us followers of Christ and they are not the only mark of a Christian… if you really want to gauge someone’s heart, listen to them talk. Slandering, back-biting, gossip, speaking ill of their neighbor, and of their fellow church members, lying, spreading rumors, spewing out hatred… all of those things are indicators of a heart that’s not right with Christ… out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. You see; people are pretty good at hiding their sin and keeping it under wraps, but ultimately their speech will reveal the condition of their heart.

John Points Us Toward Christ

So again… John is pointing everyone to Christ… and what’s interesting is that the priests who heard all of this were supposed to be the ones who were doing that, but they actually end up pointing people away from Christ. They end up letting their tradition supersede the Word of God, and their political affiliation with Rome cloud their ability to discern the truth. Let’s look at another piece of this story for us today...

John 1:31–34 NLT

I did not recognize him as the Messiah, but I have been baptizing with water so that he might be revealed to Israel.” Then John testified, “I saw the Holy Spirit descending like a dove from heaven and resting upon him. I didn’t know he was the one, but when God sent me to baptize with water, he told me, ‘The one on whom you see the Spirit descend and rest is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ I saw this happen to Jesus, so I testify that he is the Chosen One of God.”

John essentially says, here is how I know that Jesus is who I say he is...God revealed it to me. Basically, he is testifying that God told him that he would be this voice crying in the wilderness, and as he was baptizing people, someone would come to him, and he baptized, and when the Messiah came, he would know because he would see the dove, just as Jesus did.

In other words, God Himself is going to bear witness and make absolutely sure that John knows who the Messiah is. There’s not going to be any mistaken identity, or false identifications. The Holy Spirit descending like a dove proves that Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God, and the voice in the wilderness cries out to anyone and everyone who will listen. Saying, “You had better get ready! Today is the day of salvation! Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” And we know that’s what He did. He did what those millions of lambs that were slain century after century could never do. He gave His life, and satisfied God’s wrath against sin, once and for all. And now He’s seated at the right hand of God.

Ultimately, God sees…and FORGIVES

Listen, the whole point of this is that John pointed others toward Christ and not away from God. Ultimately, we can try to hide our sins from one another, but we can never hide them from God. But God has made a way, through the shed blood of Jesus, to wash our sins away and remember them no more.

When we stumble and fall away from God, we sin. When we show others that it is OK to continue to live that way and not do what we say, we are pointing others away from God. We need to be more like John and begin pointing others to Christ and the freedom that comes from knowing that we are doing God’s work in the world…Amen.

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