Introduction
Well, we return this morning to our series in the Gospel of John. So please turn with me in your Bibles to John chapter 1. As we’ve worked our way through the first 18 verses of chapter 1—commonly called the prologue to John’s Gospel—we’ve really taken our time. The introduction to Jesus that the Apostle John presents in this opening section is so lofty, so exalted, and so theologically rich that it has warranted a deliberately slow pace. It’s as if almost every word is pregnant with theological significance, as John reaches back before the beginning of all things to speak about this glorious, eternal Word that has become flesh in order to save sinners, and whose glory and fullness excels and surpasses everyone and everything in redemptive history.
And so we’ve moved slowly, in order to grasp something of what John has intended for us to understand from this magisterial introduction to Jesus Christ. But this morning we come to the first portion of the body of John’s Gospel. And we move from what you might call a theological introduction to a more traditional historical narrative. And so our pace will pick up considerably.
Now, this first section of the narrative proper of John’s Gospel—from chapter 1 verse 19 to chapter 2 verse 11—recounts the events of a single week of Jesus’ early ministry. John is more subtle than overt in the way he narrates these seven days, but he does give these time markers. Verse 29: “The next day he saw Jesus.” Verse 35, “Again the next day.” Verse 43: “The next day He purposed to go into Galilee.” It’s very unique for the Gospels to give an account of consecutive days like this. Perhaps the only other time we see it this clearly is in the narration of the days of Passion Week—the final week of Jesus’ life.
But as I said, in this opening section of John’s Gospel, we get a full week of Jesus’ early ministry. The first day comes in verses 19 to 28, where messengers from the Sanhedrin come to ask John the Baptist who he is and why he’s baptizing. The second day is unfolded in verses 29 to 34, where John testifies to Jesus as the Lamb of God, the Spirit-Anointed Messiah, and the Son of God. Verse 35 tells us of the move to a third day, in which two of John’s disciples follow after Jesus. Verse 39 says those disciples “stayed with Him that day,” because by that time “it was about the tenth hour.” So it seems Day Three ends in verse 39. Then, in verses 40–42, we read of Andrew and Simon Peter coming to follow Jesus. It would seem that constitutes Day Four. Verse 43 begins with, “The next day,” and verses 43 to 51 recount Philip and Nathanael’s following after Jesus. That’s the fifth day.
Then, in chapter 2 verse 1, we read, “On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee.” Now, remember what the Jews meant by “the third day.” Jesus was raised on “the third day,” right? But He was crucified on Good Friday and raised on Easter Sunday. By their counting, Sunday was “the third day” from Friday: (1) Friday, (2) Saturday, (3) Sunday. They counted any portion of a day as one day. So, if the wedding in Cana took place on “the third day” relative to the fifth day of this first week of Jesus’ ministry, then it would have taken place on (1) the fifth day, (2) the sixth day, (3) the seventhday. The sixth day would have been the day they traveled the 20 miles from Bethsaida to Cana (which was about a day’s journey), and so the miracle of turning water into wine in John 2:1–11 would have occurred on the seventh day in this series.
Now, why is that important? Well, the Apostle John has gone out of his way to begin his Gospel account of the Lord Jesus in precisely the same way as the Book of Genesis began the account of God’s creation of the world: (a) “In the beginningGod created the heavens and the earth,” and (b) “In the beginning was the Word” who created all things. Genesis says, “In the beginning,” and then outlines the first week of creation. John says, “In the beginning,” and then outlines the first week of Jesus’ ministry—which was what? What business was Jesus engaged in? The work of new creation! New birth, through the redemption accomplished by His blood! Second Corinthians 5:17: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.” Revelation 21:5: “Behold, I am making all things new!”
It’s true: John is much more subtle in his account of “new creation week” than Moses was in his account of the creation week in Genesis. We don’t have, “And there was evening, and there was morning, one day.” But I do think there’s enough of a parallel to say that John intended to allude to Genesis here, because the whole point of His prologue was to introduce Jesus as the eternal Son of God who has created all things, and who has now become man in order to make all things new, who will live, die, and rise again to save sinners—to whom John writes so that they may believe that Jesus is the promised Messiah, the Son of God; and, that believing, they may have true, abundant, spiritual life in His name. And you remember that that is the Apostle John’s purpose, as he stated in chapter 20 verse 31: to provide a written testimony to the glory and the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, so that all might believe and have life in His name.
And on the first day of this new creation week, John begins that work of testimony with the witness of John the Baptist to the Jews who come to question him about his ministry in the wilderness. Verse 19 begins, “This is the testimony of John.” This is a call-back to verses 6 to 8, where we learned that John the Baptist “came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him.” John came to testify, and verse 19 is the beginning of the record of that testimony.
But this is not just a history lesson. So much of it is a history lesson, because part of what it means to receive the Baptist’s eye-witness testimony is to understand that his testimony is well-grounded and that it serves as legitimate evidence for the claims the Apostle will make about Jesus throughout his Gospel. But it’s not just history. This necessarily concerns us as well. Why? Because we have been commissioned as witnesses of the Gospel of Jesus as well, haven’t we? In Luke’s account of the Great Commission, Jesus tells the disciples that the Scriptures predicted that “the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and,” Luke 24:47, “that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.” And then in Acts 1:8, as Jesus is about to ascend into heaven on the Mount of Olives, He tells the disciples again: “And you shall be My witnesses…to the remotest part of the earth.”
You and I, GraceLife, we are witnesses of the person and work of Jesus Christ! We weren’t eye-witnesses of His healings and miracles; we didn’t see Him physically risen from the dead. Oh, but we have seen Him, have we not? We have beheld, with the eyes of faith, a beauty and a glory that compels praise—that demands proclamation. “Come see a Man who forgave me of all my sins! Come see a Man who cleansed me of all my stains! Come see a Man who, though He caught me in the very act of spiritual adultery and treachery against Himself, stood between me and the Law which demanded my death, and died for me, in my place, bearing my filth as if it were His, and then covering me in His pure-white robe of righteousness, as if it were mine! And let me tell you how that Man, when, after all that, I still sin against Him, and still give myself to the very sins which He died to save me from, how He still treats me with compassion; how He refuses to cast me away, despite me giving Him every reason to; how He still forgives my sins, every time I ask with a heart that trusts in His sacrifice on my behalf!”
Dear people, we who have tasted of His excellencies are called, 1 Peter 2:9, to “proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” We are witnesses of His grace, of His forgiveness, of His excellency. His resurrection power has raised us from death to life, and now that power works in us to kill sin and to pursue righteousness. We who have been confronted with the wonders of such beauty bear the delightful duty to burst forth in praise and proclamation of that beauty. We are to be witnesses, that testify to this lost world of the worth of this Savior, of what we have seen and heard and tasted and experienced of the majesty of Christ.
And so, this passage, which is the beginning of the record of the testimony of John the Baptist, is not only a narrative of his testimony. It’s also a model of what our testimony is to be characterized by, as we serve as witnesses to the person and work of Jesus to our families, and friends, and neighbors, and to all who will hear. Let’s read our text for this morning: John 1, verses 19 to 28. “This is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent to him priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ And he confessed and did not deny, but confessed, ‘I am not the Christ.’ They asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ And he said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the Prophet?’ And he answered, ‘No.’ Then they said to him, ‘Who are you, so that we may give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself?’ He said, ‘I am “a voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’” as Isaiah the prophet said.’ Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, and said to him, ‘Why then are you baptizing, if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?’ John answered them saying, ‘I baptize in water, but among you stands One whom you do not know. It is He who comes after me, the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.’ These things took place in Bethany beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing.”
Throughout all these questions from the Jews and all the answers from John the Baptist, the overarching emphasis that you hear in this report of John’s first witness to Jesus, is the humility of the witness. When we spoke about it in chapter 1, verses 6 to 8, I called it, “The Negation of the Witness.” Chapter 1 verse 8: John “was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light.” There is a great “Not” that hangs as a banner over all of our witnessing to Christ. And it is: “Not me, but Him!” Psalm 115:1: “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to Your name give glory.” There is a deflection of all focus and all attention and all glory away from ourselves and unto Jesus. And John is an excellent example of that in this passage.
And you can divide this interaction of five questions and five answers into two main sections with those as the headings: (1) Not me, (2) but Him! (1) The negation of the witness, and (2) the exaltation of the Word. (1) The deflection of glory away from oneself, and (2) the ascription of glory unto the Savior. And that’s how we’ll present this passage this morning.
I. The Deflection of Glory (vv. 19–23)
First, the deflection of glory away from oneself. And we see this in verses 19 to 23. Let’s start in verse 19. “This is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent to him priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’”
Now, the Apostle John is not concerned to give the historical background to all the events that had taken place in John the Baptist’s ministry. Those details are given in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but John’s emphasis, as we’ve seen, has been far more theological, and far more rooted in presenting a body of evidence for the deity of Jesus, His being sent from heaven as the Son of God, and as being worthy of our trust for salvation from our sins. But let’s be reminded about who John the Baptist is and what he’s been doing that has garnered the attention of the religious establishment in Jerusalem.
We remember the account in Luke chapter 1 of John the Baptist’s miraculous birth—that the angel Gabriel told his father Zacharias that his mother, Elizabeth would conceive and bear a son, despite her advanced age, and the fact that she had been barren up to that point. Luke 1:36: “She who was called barren is now in her sixth month.” And John, while still in the womb of his mother, leaps for joy when Mary, pregnant with Jesus, visits Elizabeth, because the Messiah had come into his presence. And then when he was born, his father prophesied, Luke 1:76, that John would “be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare His ways; to give to His people the knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.” So, John was to be a prophet. There hadn’t been a word from the Lord to His people for four hundred years! And he was to be the forerunner of Messiah. His ministry would be to announce that the long-awaited Messiah was coming—that after centuries of waiting, and praying, and pining, and enduring the afflictions of being a nation under occupation (most recently by the Romans) finally, Messiah was going to come!
And so the people were flocking to him to hear his message. In the wilderness of Judea, a man wearing a camel-hair robe and a leather belt, eating locusts and wild honey, came, Luke 3:3 says, “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Messiah is coming, and Israel has been so faithless that they’ve become indistinguishable from the Gentiles around them. And so they need to turn away from their sins, and submit to a cleansing ritual performed for Gentile converts to Judaism in order to prepare themselves for Messiah’s coming. And they came in droves. Matthew 3:5 says, “Jerusalem was going out to [John in the wilderness], and all Judea and all the district around the Jordan; and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, as they confessed their sins.”
And he fearlessly preached against sin—no matter who was his audience. Matthew 3:7 says when he saw the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to be baptized, he called the most respected religious leaders of the day a “brood of vipers,” who had reason to fear the coming wrath of God. He told the tax collectors to stop extorting. He told the soldiers to stop abusing their power and to live with integrity. He was so committed to God’s standard of holiness that he even called out Herod himself, Mark 6:18, telling him that it was not lawful for him to have his brother’s wife. And you’d expect a man like Herod to retaliate, but Mark 6:20 says, “Herod was afraid of John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he kept him safe.” John’s life was so unimpeachable—and so manifestly different from those around him—that even when his message confronted the immorality of the most powerful man in the region, Herod was afraid of John! When you consider these things, it’s little wonder the Lord Jesus said of John in Matthew 11:11, “Truly I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist!”
Well, someone like this cannot have arisen in God’s nation without the religious establishment checking in on him. And so, verse 19, “the Jews sent to [John] priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him” who he was. “The Jews” is a phrase that’s used 71 times in John’s Gospel—sometimes in a neutral sense, like when John speaks of “the Passover of the Jews” in chapter 2 verse 13. Sometimes it’s used in a positive sense, like when Jesus tells the woman at the well that “salvation is of the Jews” (4:22). But by far, John uses this phrase in a negative sense to speak of the religious establishment of Israel, who set themselves against Jesus, who were hostile to Him and who opposed Him at every turn. Chapter 5 verse 16: “The Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath.” Chapter 7 verse 1: “The Jews were seeking to kill Him.” Chapter 9 verse 22: “The Jews had already agreed that if anyone confessed Him to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.” Remember what John told us in chapter 1 verse 11: “He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him.”
And the delegation sent from the Jews to inquire of John the Baptist included “priests and Levites from Jerusalem,” which makes it likely that “the Jews” here refers to the Sanhedrin, the legislative body and judicial counsel of Israel, composed of seventy elders and scribes along with the high priest. It was their business to know about men like John—supposéd prophets, popular among the people, and riling them up into a frenzy with talk about the coming of Messiah. The “priests” were to perform the temple service according to the Old Testament instructions, representing the people to God and representing God to the people. They were also the religious teachers in Israel, who would evaluate the legitimacy of someone like John the Baptist. The “Levites,” according to Numbers chapter 3, were supposed to assist the priests in all the duties of temple worship, and that would include serving as temple police to protect the priests—which was likely their role here: something like bodyguards for the priests who were going to confront a popular preacher.
And this delegation was sent, verse 19, “to ask him, ‘Who are you?’” Who was this holy and righteous man, who had no regard for the normal comforts of life, no regard for the opinions or sensibilities of magistrates who might deprive him of his head for preaching so intensely against their own sins? Who was this preacher who was regarded by the people as a prophet, talking about the coming of Messiah? Does he claim to be the Messiah? Luke 3:15 says, “the people were in a state of expectation and all were wondering in their hearts about John, as to whether he was the Christ.”
And John seems to detect something in this question that implies that that’s what this delegation wants to know, because he replies by resolutely denying that he is the Messiah. Verse 20: “And he confessed and did not deny, but confessed, ‘I am not the Christ.’” Listen to the vehemence of that denial. The Apostle John wants no confusion on this. John the Baptist was crystal clear: he was not proclaiming himself as the promised Anointed One of God. “I am not the message!” In fact, he uses the first person pronoun emphatically like that. The original language communicates that John is saying, “I’m not the Christ!” As in: No, I’m not the guy you’re looking for. Messiah is here, but I’m not Him.
And that is such a lesson for those of us who would be faithful witnesses for Christ. Especially in today’s evangelical climate, there is so much self-promotion among men who would call themselves ministers—servants, slaves—of Christ and His Gospel. So much platform-building, and brand-building. “Order my book! Come to my conference! Download my podcast! Buy my merch!” It’s sickening to see how many young men seem to want to use Jesus to make their name famous. The lust for fame, and recognition, and maybe even power and influence just seems to be so strong, that I wonder if the up-and-coming darlings of evangelicalism could even give the same answer as John the Baptist did to a delegation like this.
It would have been easy for John to say, “Hey! these people think I’m the Messiah! Let’s give the people what they want! If they’ll be carried away by their own deceptions, who am I to stand in their way?” That’s how hirelings and deceivers think. But what does John say? If people even think about confusing him with the Christ he preached, he confesses, and does not deny but confesses, “I am not the Christ.” Matthew Henry makes such an insightful observation about this when he says, “Temptations to pride, and assuming that honour to ourselves which does not belong to us, ought to be resisted with a great deal of vigour and earnestness.” And then he says, “God’s faithful witnesses stand more upon their guard against undue respect than against unjust contempt.”
That’s so spot-on. When people slander us, and revile us unjustly, so many of us come to our own defense with a meticulousness and a zeal that would put lawyers to shame. But John was more worried that people would think too muchof him! Paul says the same thing in 2 Corinthians 12:6. He says, I refrain from boasting, “so that no one will credit me with more than he sees in me or hears from me.” You see, “God’s faithful witnesses stand more upon their guard againstundue respect than against unjust contempt.” Dear people, we are not the Christ! We are not people’s saviors, and so we can’t live under the pressure of trying to do for them what only God can do for them. Nor are we people’s lords, and so we may not place undue pressure upon them, beyond what Christ Himself places upon them in His Word. We may preach the Gospel of grace, but we cannot dispense grace. We may preach the word of reconciliation, but we cannot reconcile or regenerate. We may lead the sheep to their Shepherd for comfort and consolation, but we cannot give what is found in Christ alone. And we dare not steal the glory of Jesus by suggesting otherwise. Second Corinthians 4:5: “We do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake.”
Well, they respond, verse 21, “What then? Are you Elijah?” And we understand why there would be some confusion about this. In the final book of the Old Testament, God promises in Malachi 3:1: “Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple.” In Malachi 4:5, Yahweh promises to send Israel “Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of Yahweh.” And in Luke 1:17, the angel prophesies that John “will go as a forerunner before [the Messiah] in the spirit and power of Elijah,” and then he quotes Malachi 4, “to turn the hearts of the fathers back to the children, and the disobedient to the attitude of the righteous, so as to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
And so the Jews expected, as the disciples say in Matthew 17:10, that Elijah would return to earth as a forerunner of the Messiah. And we also believe, as Jesus says in Matthew 17:11, that Elijah will return to earth before Messiah’s Second Coming, before the great and terrible Day of the Lord, when the wrath of God’s judgment is poured out upon the whole earth in the Great Tribulation. Well, here was John the Baptist—living in the wilderness, caring nothing for the comforts of the world as if he had dropped straight out of heaven, announcing the coming of the Messiah, wearing the same kind of clothes that Elijah was said to wear in 2 Kings 1:8: “a garment of hair with a belt of leather around his waist” (ESV); fearlessly calling the nation to repentance, even if standing alone. And so the delegation asks him: Are you the reincarnation of Elijah the Tishbite that Malachi says we should expect?
And again, John says, “I am not.” And you say, “Wait a minute. Doesn’t Jesus say in Matthew 17:12 that Elijah already came? And doesn’t He say in Matthew 11:14, ‘If you are willing to accept it, John the Baptist is the Elijah who was to come’? How can John say he’s not Elijah when Jesus says He is?” And the answer is: Jesus was speaking figuratively of John being an Elijah-like figure—one who came in the spirit and power of Elijah. But John was not the prophet who was carried into heaven in a chariot of fire in 2 Kings 2:11. And so he said so, and disclaimed that honor as well.
Then they asked, verse 21, “Are you the Prophet?” This is a reference to the Jewish tradition that there would be several prophets that would appear before the coming of Messiah. In Matthew 16:13, Jesus asks, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they reply, verse 14, “Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.” In John chapter 7, verses 40 to 41, after the crowds hear Jesus teaching about the coming Holy Spirit, some say, “This certainly is the Prophet,” and others say, “This is the Christ.” And so Jewish tradition expected a Messiah-like figure who was a prophet. And in Acts 3:22, Peter quotes Deuteronomy 18:15–19, where Moses promises that God will raise up a prophet like him, whose words they must heed, and Peter identifies the Prophet with the Messiah. And so the delegation asks John, “You’re not the Christ; you’re not Elijah. Are you the Prophet we should expect?” And John replies—even more curt and seemingly uncomfortable with all the attention—he just says, “No.” John doesn’t want to talk about himself. He’s there to talk about Jesus.
And so, verse 22, “Then they said to him, ‘Who are you, so that we may give an answer to those who sent us?’” “We can’t go back to Jerusalem and tell the Sanhedrin only whom you claim not to be. Give us something.” And so John says, verse 23, “I am ‘a voice of one crying in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord,” as Isaiah the prophet said.’” He quotes Isaiah 40 verse 3—the passage that Matthew, Mark, and Luke all cite as referring to John the Baptist. But here, John himself declares that he is the fulfillment of that prophecy.
And it’s brilliant, because at one and the same time, John declares that he has a divine commission from heaven—that he does not speak on his own authority, but that he speaks on the authority of the Word of God—but at the same time, he assigns to himself a role that is entirely insignificant in comparison to the Lord whose way he prepares. “I am the forerunner as foretold by Scripture, and so it is with divine authority that I cry out in this wilderness. But I am not the One whose coming I declare. I am here only to prepare the way for Another. I am not the eternal Word that was with God in the beginning. I am just a voice, who announces the coming of that Word to dwell with men in our flesh. You see, God does not speak to us audibly from heaven—though, about this One, He will speak from heaven and declare that this is His Beloved Son whose words we must pay heed to. But since God has not been in the habit of speaking to His people audibly, He employs His ministers to be His mouthpieces. And so, I am nothing more than the voice for the words of my Master—the mouthpiece by which God is pleased to communicate His mind to men” (cf. Henry).
Here is the deflection of all glory away from himself. “I am not! I am not! I am not!” You see, the faithful witness does everything he can to get himself out of the way—everything he can to be merely incidental; just the finger that points to Jesus. So far from using Jesus to make our name great, faithful witnesses deflect all glory away from ourselves. We delight to decrease, so that Christ may increase. We say, with the great preacher, who would rebuke me if I used his name, “Let [my] name…perish, but Christ be glorified. Let my name die everywhere, let even my friends forget me, if by that means the cause of the blesséd Jesus may be promoted. … Let us look above names and parties; let Jesus be our all in all—so that He is preached. … I care not who is uppermost. I know my place…even to be the servant of all.” The faithful witness says, “Don’t look at me; look through me, to Him who is the fountain of life and the spring of all your joy!”
II. The Ascription of Glory (vv. 23–28)
And that brings us to our second point. The faithful witness not only deflects all glory away from himself. He also, number two, ascribes all glory unto the Savior. “Not me, but Him!” The negation of the witness, and the exaltation of the Word! And we see that in verses 23 to 28, with verse 23 really being the hinge for these two ideas. John is just a voice. But he is “a voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’”
As we’ve said, this is a citation of Isaiah chapter 40 verse 3, where, after 39 chapters of judgment, Isaiah begins his Book of Comfort by recording God’s announcement to Israel: “Speak kindly to Jerusalem; and call out to her, that her warfare has ended, that her iniquity has been removed.” And then verse 3, “A voice is calling, ‘Clear the way for Yahweh in the wilderness; make smooth in the desert a highway for our God. Let every valley be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; and let the rough ground become a plain, and the rugged terrain a broad valley; Then the glory of Yahwehwill be revealed, and all flesh will see it together.’” John the Baptist is saying, “I am this voice!” And whose way is he clearing in the wilderness? Yahweh’s way! He’s making smooth a highway for “our God”!
Do you see what John’s doing? “You guys are coming to me trying to get me to say something great about myself. I am just a voice, calling out for people to clear the way for the coming of Yahweh. I just want to prepare you for and point you to the coming of God to dwell with men.” Friends, John is testifying: Jesus is God! He is Yahweh from Isaiah 40, who will remove the iniquity of His people! “All glory belongs to Him! to the coming King! And,” he says, “you aren’t yet ready for Him! Your hearts are as desolate as this wilderness, with no road for this King to travel upon as He comes to you in His kindness and grace. You need to prepare in your own hearts a smooth, level roadway—one that’s forged by repentance from sin, so that you are ready to meet the King of glory, who is compassionate, and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness, but who will by no means leave the guilty unpunished!”
And of course, at such an insinuation, the Pharisees spoke up. Verse 24 says, “Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.” But a better translation is, “Now some Pharisees who had been sent asked Him…” In other words, there were some Pharisees among the group that had been sent to John, and it was at this time that they spoke up. The term Phariseederives from word that means “to separate.” The Pharisees were those who had “separated themselves from all loose religious practices and [who] live[d] in strict accordance with the law. … [They] were the party of strict orthodoxy” (Morris, 122n31). And that’s good as far as it goes. These were the descendants of that party in Israel that had successfully opposed Antiochus Epiphanes in the second century BC, and preserved the purity of Jewish religion against pagan aggression.
But by Jesus’ day, their concern for keeping the law blamelessly had led them to fabricate a litany of manmade traditions that acted something like a fence erected around the law—perhaps with the thought that if the people followed thesetraditions, they wouldn’t even get close to breaking the law of God. But the substitution of the pure Word of God for manmade traditions had the effect it always has: it externalized righteousness; it bred spiritual pride in those who kept the traditions; and it bred despair in those who couldn’t manage to keep them. The Pharisees kept the law—or so they claimed. They kept their traditions, and they looked down upon those who couldn’t, and they judged themselves as righteous for following their own manmade rules. The notion that their hearts needed to be prepared by repentance for the coming of Messiah was positively offensive to them.
And so they asked John, verse 25, “Why then are you baptizing, if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” “Baptism is a ceremonial cleansing rite, which is designed to symbolize the cleansing of unclean Gentile converts to Judaism. But you’re administering that to the Jews—to God’s people—insinuating that they’re unclean and need to be cleansed by this repentance. If you’re not the Messiah, and you’re not Elijah, and you’re not the expected Prophet, then on what authority do you presume to do something like this?”
But they can’t get John to talk about himself. John did have authority to baptize. How easy it would have been to get into an argument about his own credentials. God Himself sent him to baptize, and He set him apart by a miraculous birth prophesied by an angel! But he’s not there to establish his own legitimacy. He’s there to point to Christ. So he says, verse 26, “I baptize in water, but among you stands One whom you do not know. It is He who comes after me, the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” “I just dunk people in water. That’s all. I perform a sign that points to the spiritual cleansing that we all must receive from the One coming after me. Let’s talk about Him. The water I baptize with doesn’t wash the soul. My ministry cannot confer the grace that it pictures. Oh, but there is One who stands among you, and you don’t even know who He is!” Again, back to the prologue, chapter 1 verse 10: “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.”
John did have authority to baptize. But he says, “I’m not worth the time it takes to think about me compared to the One I’m testifying to!” In fact, if you were familiar with Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you would have heard John say, “I baptize in water,” and you would have expected him to follow that with what? “But He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” And John does say that in this account, but it waits until verse 34. It’s as if he’s saying, “Forget talking about baptism for a minute. The whole point of baptism is to point to Him.” He’ll say in verse 31, “I came baptizing in water…so that Hemight be manifested to Israel.” Calvin summarizes it this way. He says, “Nothing can be known about his ministry, until men have come to him who is the Author of it. … [John] wishes to place himself as low as possible, lest any degree of honor improperly bestowed on him might obscure the excellence of Christ” (62). And that is, as Pastor John has said, the first law of ministry. It’s just this constant deflection of glory away from ourselves, and the ascription of glory to Jesus alone. “Not me, but Him!”
And John goes so far as to say, verse 27: “It is He who comes after me, the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” He calls Him, “He who comes after me,” just as we read in verse 15 in the prologue, and just as we’ll read again in verse 30 where John repeats the full sentence: “He who comes after me has become before me, because He was before me.” “This One who was born after me and begins His ministry after mine—He surpasses me! He has come to outrankme! He has excelled me in every way! And in fact, so much is that the case, I’m not even worthy to untie His sandals!”
And this is truly astounding. You have to understand: in the ancient near east, taking off someone’s sandals was a task only for slaves. People wore open-toed sandals in a place where the paths were dusty and sandy, and so anything dealing with feet was particularly demeaning. That’s why it was such an amazing display of humility for Jesus to stoop and wash His disciples’ feet in John 13. Well, it was also customary for disciples of a particular teacher to perform for their rabbi every service a slave would perform for their master—except the loosing of the sandal. That was too degrading for a disciple to do, and so it was left to the slaves. But John says, “I’m not worthy even to be called His slave!” One commentator says, “Humility could scarcely take a lower place” (Morris, 124).
Matthew Henry paraphrases John’s words here and says what must be our confession—each and every one of us. “I am not fit to be named in the same day with Him. It is an honor too great for me to pretend to be in the [lowest] office [around] Him.” Then he makes this application: “Those to whom Christ is precious reckon His service—even the most despised instances of it—an honor to them.”
Oh, how we need that spirit of genuine humility to dwell within us as it did in John the Baptist! It’s easy for those who don’t have much experience in ministry to glamorize it. And honestly, that’s especially true in a place like this, where we are so immeasurably blessed to serve Christ in relative plenty, with so many people eager to follow Jesus obediently and to serve sacrificially. But the truth is, no matter where you serve, if you’re doing ministry biblically, it’s hard. And someseasons are more particularly difficult than others, where you see the naked filthiness of sin, and the horrific damage it can inflict on God’s people. And you do everything you can to help people turn from it, and no matter your best and most sincere efforts, they just step on you. You pour out your very soul and it seems to mean nothing to them. In other words, they treat you like a slave! Which is exactly what Jesus said the minister must be! Mark 10:44: “Whoever wishes to be first among you shall be slave of all.” And, stupid us, we say, “Jesus, You meant that literally?”
This is where you get strength for endurance in ministry. In the most demanding, demeaning, wearying kinds of ministry: “I’m not fit to untie His sandals.” “I’m not worthy of even being His slave! Even that is too high an honor for a worm like me!” And you say, “Lord Jesus, thank You for letting me be Your slave! By calling me into Your service, you treat me with a dignity that is far beyond my native station! Far better than I deserve, to be the slave of all!” A slave in the house of the true King of the universe is a greater honor than a throne and a crown in a realm that’s not His. Psalm 84:10: “A day in Your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere! I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness” (ESV). “Lord, I didn’t know what I was asking for when I said, John 3:30, ‘He must increase, but I must decrease.’ The decreasing hurts far more than I expected! But Lord, if what it takes for You to increase is me to decrease, then let me go to the dust, and You magnify Your name!”
My absolute favorite quote outside of Scripture is from a sermon by Charles Spurgeon. He said, “If Christ be glorious, it is all the heaven I ask for. If He shall be King of kings, and Lord of lords, let me be nothing. If He shall but reign, and every tongue shall call Him blessed, it shall be bliss to me to know it. And if I may be but one of the withered roses which lie in the path of His triumph, it shall be my paradise.” O, may God give grace that each of us can speak those words with integrity, from the heart! And may it strengthen us to serve Him well, to be faithful witnesses, even in the lowliest and humblest of circumstances.
Conclusion
Verse 28 gives a brief word of place: “These things took place in Bethany beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing.” It wasn’t the better-known Bethany, near Jerusalem, where Mary and Martha and Lazarus lived. But it was in the wilderness, in John’s normal place of ministry, so that nothing was a mystery to anyone.
Such was John’s testimony to Jesus in response to the inquiries of the officials in Jerusalem. And you would think that, hearing so extraordinary a testimony with such extraordinary humility, would make them say: “Who is this One among us that we do not know? Where can we find Him, that we might put our trust in Him, and follow after Him, and give our lives to His service?”
But no. There was none of that. They sat under the testimony for Christ, but they would not come to Him. Dear friends, does that describe any of you? You who sit here, week after week, and hear of the glories of this Savior, but refuse to trustHim? refuse to surrender to His Lordship? refuse to loosen your grip on your cherished sins and to follow after Jesus with all of your soul? You who come to hear of eternal life, and forgiveness of sins, and a cleansed conscience, and the certainty of heaven, but who refuse to bow the knee, to part with your idols, to abandon all confidence in yourselves for righteousness?
Dear sinner, how foolish could you be? To follow the ignorance and unbelief of the Pharisees, rather than to follow after Christ Himself, the wisdom of God and the power of God! Turn from that foolish path. Repent of your sins. Cast away your idols from you, and come to this Savior—to One so glorious that He frees you to enjoy being debased, if it means that you can see Him exalted! To the One who has borne the sins of His people in His own body; who has paid their penalty in His death; who has purchased forgiveness; who has fulfilled all righteousness for everyone who trusts in Him; and who has risen from the dead, and has gone into heaven, and who promises to raise us as well, that we may be where He is for ages without end. O, repent and believe this Good News!
And dear brothers and sisters: may we learn from John the Baptist, that in the service of this great King, we must deflectall glory from ourselves, and ascribe all glory to Him alone. That shall be our paradise.