Sermon Tone Analysis

John’s Testimony of Christ (Jn.

1:19-37)

Our Scripture for the morning as a setting for our message is from John's gospel chapter 1 verses 19 through verse 37.  We are coming into a different type of study.

I believe in the expositional method of preaching, that is just take a book and go through, when you get done, take another book and go through and just keep going like that all the time.

It eliminates having to worry about what you're going to talk about because the Holy Spirit has it prepared for you each week.

And so, we have studied the book of Romans which is doctrine.

We have studied basically 1 and 2 Peter which are doctrine in many ways as well as practical areas, but there's much doctrine there.

We have been emphasizing doctrine even in the book of Revelation in its initial aspects.

And we have also been teaching doctrine in the first part of John's gospel.

And now for really the first time in our time together as pastor and flock we shall approach a narrative passage.

And for the rest of the gospel of John we will be dealing not so much with systematic doctrine as we will be dealing with narrative.

We'll be dealing with the account of the life of Christ as He is presented by John as the Son of God.

As I've said in several times in the past few weeks, John wants to present Christ as God's Son.

He does not concern himself with Christ a man so much, although he does bring that up, of course.

He does not concern himself with dimensions of Christ's relation to Israel as Matthew does.

But he concerns himself with proving by the use of many witnesses that Christ is indeed and in fact the very Son of God, God in a body.

That's John's burden.

That's John's message.

And now as we look at verse 19 we come into the narrative, the historical narrative of Christ's ministry.

John hasn't even bothered with the first 30 years of the life of Christ because they had no relationship to His ministry and He did not present Himself as the Son of God until He began His ministry so John isn't concerned about those terms when He was not acting as the Son of God and when He was not official stating His place as Messiah.

Now you'll remember that John's purpose is stated in chapter 20 verse 31 where John says he's presenting Christ as the Son of God in order that men might believe.

That's what he does in the whole book.

Here is Christ, here is His salvation, believe.

That's John's message all through this book as we shall see.

He is presenting Christ the Son of God, the salvation that He offers and men who believed and then some who rejected.

And so he uses all the witnesses he can in this book, all through the book he musters up everybody that he can call on to testify to the fact that Christ is the Son of God.

John knows that the weight of evidence is greater if there are more than one witnesses.

So he says I believe He's the Son of God and I'm going to add to that, so does he and so does this and so does that and so does this and he piles it all up, a rather...well it proves, put it that way, it proves the deity of Christ in terms of witnesses.

It's as if he's in a courtroom and he calls everybody in to testify.

It's a conclusive case because of the many witnesses.

He calls on God to witness that Christ is His Son and God does.

He calls on the very words of Christ and Christ admits that He's God.

He says the works of Christ prove that He's God.

The disciples lives and testimonies prove that He's God.

All believers of all times by the very life they live prove that He's God, etc.  Everything speaks to the fact that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, He's God in a body.

But the first witness that John the Apostle calls is John the Baptist.

And anytime you see the name "John" in the gospel of John, it does not refer to John the writer who was the Apostle, it always refers to John the Baptist because John never names himself.

He always calls himself "the disciple whom Jesus loved," or "that disciple."

He's very humble.

And I don't know, I kind of like calling myself the disciple whom Jesus loved, it's kind of nice.

It's true.

And John always expresses himself that way.

And so, whenever he mentions the name John, he's referring to John the Baptist.

And so the first witness that John the Apostle brings up to corroborate the statement that Christ is God is John the Baptist.

Now in the first 18 verses of chapter 1 John has been saying that Christ is God, right?

He said it from every angle imaginable.

And now he is said in verses 6 to 8 that there was a man sent from God whose name was John.

And he came to bear witness to the light.

And he interjects the idea that John the Baptist was his first witness.

And now John the Baptist's testimony comes in verses 19 to 37.  And so in our study for today we're going to see the testimony of John the Baptist to the fact that Christ is God.

And you can't come to Jesus Christ with anything less.

Christ was not just a good man, Christ was not just a great teacher, Christ was not just somebody who was so good that God zapped Him with a little deity somewhere long the line.

Christ was not somebody who when He got to the cross God sort of injected Him with a logos and then it left after His resurrection, which are all kinds of heretical doctrines, you don't need to know about them, just learn truth and you can take care of error.

But basically Christ has to be God or the whole idea is meaningless, you can throw the whole Bible away and forget Christianity from top to bottom.

So John wants to show you that Christ is God and he brings in John the Baptist to give testimony and John's his first witness in the case.

And John's witness comes in verses 19 to 37, it comes in three parts.

John gives three witnesses on three different days to three different groups with three different emphases and talks about Christ in three different ways.

And so we come this morning to the witness of John the Baptist as to who Jesus Christ is.

Now you've had the witness of John the Apostle in the first 18 verses.

He told you who He was, he said the same was in the beginning with God and He was God.

Now he adds to that the testimony of John the Baptist in three dimensions on three different days to three different groups with three different emphases and saying three different things about Christ.

But before we look at what he says let's think about who he is.

John the Baptist was a fascinating character.

You've all heard about him undoubtedly from the time you were in Sunday School as a child and you were enamored about the diet and the clothes that he wore.

But John the Baptist was a very remarkable man, very remarkable.

Evidently he began his ministry just prior to his thirtieth birthday.

When he was 29 years of age he began.

There has to be a time of preparation.

Even Christ never began his ministry till he was 30 years of age even He needed the preparation that He had for those 30 years.

And so John began a little bit before Christ, was the cousin of Jesus Christ and began his ministry just prior to the time he was 30-years-old as best we can ascertain.

Now he was the first prophet in Israel in 400 years and they had been looking for one for a long time.

And so, when John came along the people really went after him.

He was dynamic.

He was forceful.

He was bold.

He was filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb and it came across when he communicated.

And he got to preaching out there by the Jordan in the Jordan Valley and everybody went out there to hear him.

And he may have been fairly well known because he was the son of a priest, Zacharias.

He had this tremendous power but interestingly enough he kind of moved away from society and he identified himself with the poor people.

And the poor people wore camel's hair and leather belts and that's what he wore.

And the poor people ate grasshoppers and wild honey, and so that's what he ate.

He completely identified himself with the people in the area where he was, and it wasn't anything abnormal about grasshoppers and wild honey, a lot of people ate it in those days, unimaginable however, but they did.

And John the Baptist had a diet and a garb that was pretty much standard stuff for poor people living in the wilderness area.

And when he got out there with all of this dynamic and all of the interest in him as a person, the people began to flock out there to see him.

And Matthew tells us in chapter 3 verses 5 and 6 that everybody in Jerusalem, Judea and all the country around went out there to see John.

I mean, after all there hadn't been this kind of a dynamic voice in Israel for 400 years.

And all of a sudden this guy pops up in the wilderness and everybody's first thought is, "Wow, this just might be the Messiah, this just might be the one we've been waiting for."

And Mark also records for us that everybody went out there in chapter 1 verse 5 of Mark.

So he was very popular.

Now notice down there for just a second by way of introduction in verse 28 that it says, "These things were done," and it probably says in your Bible Beth-a-bara or Bethab-ara, different pronunciations are possible, either pronunciation is wrong.

It is Bethany.

And the reason some people have substituted Beth-a-bara or Bethab-ara, is because they feel that it confuses the issue because Bethany isn't over there by the Jordan.

But the answer is very simple.

There happen to be two Bethanys.

There's one down there by Jerusalem where Mary and Martha and Lazarus lived.

And there's another one, and that's what's said here.

"These things were done in Bethany."

What Bethany?  "The Bethany beyond, what?

beyond the Jordan."

That one, over by the area of Galilee.

And so, John was out there in the Jordan Valley at a place called Bethany.