CHRISTMAS MESSAGES: John the Baptist

Inbox Established What happened once the silence of God began to be broken; what occurred when God’s inbox with Israel was re-established?

Much of God’s communication with the people of Israel came through an intermediary, a person chosen by God to speak on His behalf. These prophets functioned like an inbox from which God’s messages could be retrieved and because this was the most familiar way of hearing from God, the people of Israel were constantly on the lookout for the next prophet who would further the message of God to humanity. “See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.” (Malachi 4:5-6)

This message sat in the inbox of the people of Israel for centuries causing many religious thinkers to attempt interpretation and application to present circumstances. “A voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a 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.” (Isaiah 40:3-5) The expectation that developed was that one “like” Elijah would come immediately before the Messiah and prepare the way for his arrival.

Elijah is a pretty big deal within Judaism, one of the preeminent prophets of God, a man who revealed the true God through a ministry devoted to preaching repentance. Elijah lived in the wilderness of ancient Israel and was known for being a strange sort of fellow. Elijah stood as a major communicator of God’s message to the people of Israel, during some trying times as a nation.

This one like Elijah, who would prepare God’s people for the coming Messiah, would mirror many of the characteristics of the original Elijah. The wilderness setting of this new Elijah’s ministry and the core of his work as a ministry of repentance are clear reflections of Elijah’s much earlier ministry. Just as there was a very clear disruptive nature to Elijah’s work, there would be an unsettling nature to what the new Elijah would bring to the people of Israel. Following the final prophetic message of Malachi, the people of Israel were left to await the arrival of this new Elijah who would herald and prepare the way for the coming Messiah.

The Promise to Zechariah “He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” (Luke 1:16-17) Does this sound familiar or eerily reminiscent of anything? This child of Zechariah and Elizabeth’s will be the promised new Elijah of Malachi, the one who would prepare the way for the coming Messiah, the one who would establish a new inbox for God’s communication with the people of Israel

Elizabeth had a distant relative named Mary, an unmarried cousin a significant number of years younger than her. Six months into Elizabeth’s miraculous pregnancy, Mary was visited by an angel who informed her that she would shortly be pregnant through the Holy Spirit; in her womb, she would carry the Messiah, Jesus. In his late 20’s, John was directed by God to begin a peculiar wilderness ministry. He “went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Luke 3:3). He brashly and boldly confronted the people of Israel, encouraging them to not simply feign religiosity, but to produce fruit in keeping with repentance.

His message was not easy believism, but required effort and sacrifice. Message after message dropped into the inbox of the people of Israel through John the Baptist, urging them to repent of their surface level religiosity and engage in acts keeping with such repentance. When God finally started speaking again, it was to disrupt sinful patterns that had crept into the life of His people. Rather than performing the work of the Messiah, John’s work would prepare the people of Israel for the coming Messiah, his cousin, Jesus.

John’s most jarring message came when Jesus came on the scene; upon seeing Jesus, John proclaimed “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). The message of Christmas cannot be divorced from the message of the cross; there is no Christmas without Easter. Just as his message disrupted the people of Israel from their stupor of religiosity, John’s message pointed to a disruptive and difficult path for the Messiah. John pointed forward to a new inbox, a coming prophet who would be unlike any other, one who would create for all humanity a lasting inbox into which the full message of God to His creation would be deposited.

Have you been hearing from God over the last little while Have you been hearing from God over the last little while? Has an inbox for God’s communication with you been established? Sometimes we are so busy “doing” Christianity that we never take a moment to consider what God might be trying to say to us. For many people at the time of John the Baptist, they were so focussed on “doing” Judaism that they were deaf to the new communication through John. They missed his preparation work and, unfortunately, many also missed Jesus when He showed up on the scene. Ask yourself: am I listening for God’s voice to me?

Are you checking your inbox, opening the messages and responding to them? Ask yourself: am I willing to accept the message of Christmas, even though it points to the cross? Are you open to accepting the joyous arrival of the Messiah, even if this requires some levelling of mountains in your own life? If following Jesus means accepting both the manger and the cross, am I willing to follow Him? As we head to the Lord’s Table this morning, let us not forget the words of John the Baptist, the long awaited new Elijah regarding Jesus - “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”.