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Sunday, February 4, 2018

An Unforgettable Character Named John

John the Baptist was surely one of the world’s most unforgettable characters even though he never made it into the Reader’s Digest’s popular series “The Most Unforgettable Character I ever met.”

 

Doctor Luke quickly sketches John’s unique profile in Luke 3, writing “the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness” (Luke 3:2). Earlier, Luke tells us “the child (John) grew and became strong in spirit; and he lived in the wilderness until he appeared publicly to Israel” (Luke 1:80).

William Barclay provides a vivid description of the landscape that John knew so well. “Between the centre of Judaea and the Dead Sea lies one of the most terrible deserts in the world. It is a limestone desert; it looks warped and twisted; it shimmers in the haze of the heat; the rock is hot and blistering and sounds hollow to the feet as if there was some vast furnace underneath; it moves out to the Dead Sea and descends in dreadful and unscalable precipices down to the shore. In the Old Testament it is sometimes called Jeshimmon, which means The Devastation. John was no city-dweller. He was a man from the desert and from its solitudes and its desolations. He was a man who had given himself a chance to hear the voice of God” (The Gospel of Mark, 1975, page 16).

John’s very appearance conveys a message. He lives simply in the desert, eating locusts and honey, and he wears a garment woven from camel’s hair and a leather belt. As news spread about him crowds of people made their way out to the desert country to see him and hear his provocative message.

“He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet: A voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him’” (Luke 3:3-4).

Following the example of Israel’s prophets, John’s preaching style was bold and direct when he spoke—even to those who came to him for baptism: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance” (Luke 3:7-8) . . . adding “every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire” (Luke 3:9).

“What should we do then?” the crowd asked. “If you have two coats, give one away,” he said. “Do the same with your food.” 

Tax men also came to be baptized and said, “Teacher, what should we do?” He told them, “No more extortion—collect only what is required by law.”

Soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?” He told them, “No shakedowns, no blackmail—and be content with your rations.”

The interest of the people by now was building. They were all beginning to wonder, “Could this John be the Messiah?” (Luke 3:10-15, The Message).

But John intervened: “I’m baptizing you here in the river. The main character in this drama, to whom I’m a mere stagehand will ignite the kingdom life, a fire, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out. He’s going to clean house—make a clean sweep of your lives. He’ll place everything in its proper place before God; everything false he’ll put out with the trash to be burned” (Luke 3:16-17, The Message).

“With many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them” (Luke 3:18). How many people heard John’s fiery talks? Did they number in the hundreds, thousands, or were there as many as a million? We do not know precisely how many people heard John preach. 

All we do know is that after he dared to rebuke Herod Antipas, a government official who married his brother’s wife, Herod locked John up in prison. And by reading Mark 6:24, and Matthew 14:10 we learn that ultimately John was beheaded and died as a prisoner (Matthew 14:10). 

John the Baptist lived a short, dramatic and unique life that people never forgot. He surely qualifies as one of the world’s Most Unforgettable Characters on the world’s stage.

There’s one more thing to note in Luke 3:23-38—the way the author chooses to record Jesus’ genealogy—some still thought of Jesus as the “son of Joseph,” but Luke traces his lineage back to Adam “the son of God.” 

As N.T. Wright writes: “Perhaps it is best to see the family tree, stretching back to the creation of the world, as a way of saying that, though Jesus is indeed the Messiah of Israel (another meaning of ‘son of God’), he is so precisely for the whole world. All creation, the whole human race, will benefit from what he has come to do" (Luke for Everyone, Westminster, John Knox Press, 2001, 2004).