Sermon Transcript (Transcript starts at 20:26)
You ever been sitting there on your phone? Or maybe you’re sitting there watching tv and things are kind of peaceful and quiet? You’re just kind of relaxing at home, and then all of a sudden, you hear that sound, that tone? Right?
You know the tone. I’m talking about that emergency signal. I was thinking about actually playing it for us today, but it turns out it’s illegal to do that. So I decided it was probably better not to do that. So we’re not going to play that signal.
Thankfully. My wife, we were talking about this, and she’s like, I hate that sound. Please, I’m so glad that you can’t play it. Please don’t. Just because it’s meant to get your attention, to wake you up to whatever is going on in the world around you, it means that there’s a message that you need to pay attention to.
You ever hear that sound and just kind of try to ignore it, right? And they’re like, that’s probably just a test. That’s why they say, this is not a test, right? And they have specific things to get our attention. It means that there’s something happening, and it’s urgent, and it’s important, and it demands your attention.
Right now, you need to pay attention to what’s going on around you. Cause this thing’s happening. And just as those emergency messages come through to us, John the Baptist was somebody with a message who. He was telling people, this is urgent. It’s important.
It demands your attention, your immediate attention from everyone. John had a message that was so important, and he pointed to someone who was so important that Jesus, the one who John pointed to, came to change the course of history. Today, we’re going to explore through the life of John, and over the next several weeks, we’re going to explore through the life of John the Baptist how we can become messengers of that urgent and important message that demands that we pay attention to it. We can be beacons. We can be messengers of Jesus coming of a coming king who is victorious over the whole world.
John was the forerunner, the messenger who prepared the way for Jesus. And we also can prepare the way for Jesus. Just like John, we can be modern day messengers of Christ who point the world to him. So let’s dive into the life of John. As we start, I want to assume.
I don’t want to assume, I guess, that we all know who John the Baptist is. So I want to start with just the basics of who John the Baptist is so we can get introduced to his life in a way that we can connect with him and we can see how we can apply the things that he did in his life to point people to Jesus, to our own lives, so that we can point others to Jesus. So who was John? John the Baptist was the promised forerunner of Jesus Christ. In fact, John’s life and his ministry were foretold to prepare the way for Jesus.
It was prophesied all the way back in the Old Testament by Old Testament prophets. Now think about this. Isn’t that amazing that God is so in tune with what we need to be able to believe the gospel, so in tune with this idea of bringing this message of Christ, of Christ entering into the world to take away our sins so that we could be saved, so that we can have a relationship with him, that all the way back in the Old Testament, God was pointing forward, not even just to Jesus. There’s tons of prophecies about Jesus coming the first time in the Old Testament. Right?
And we’re probably familiar with those things. We talk a lot about them around Christmas and throughout, really throughout the year. We talk all the time about how Jesus was the prophesied messiah. But God is so in tune with his plan, he’s so fervent about sending Jesus that he even tells us, he even foretells us prophesies that those who would point to Jesus are coming. And so we not only have prophecies about Jesus coming the first time, we also have prophecies about John and his message of a coming Christ, of a coming messiah, all the way back in Isaiah, chapter 40.
We’re going to start there. If you want to turn your bibles. Isaiah 40. We’re going to be here for a minute. Isaiah says of John that John is a voice, a voice of one calling in the wilderness, prepare the way for the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Now, in Isaiah’s time, Isaiah wasn’t looking at this guy named John from, from Israel, right? He didn’t have specifically that guy in mind, but God did. God is speaking through his prophet Isaiah about a voice calling out into the wilderness to Israel to make straight the way of the Lord. Da Carson points out that throughout Isaiah’s prophecy, throughout his book, throughout the book of Isaiah, we see that God is a holy God, that he’s a trustworthy king, a trustworthy ruler over his people, Israel. And throughout we see Isaiah telling us that God wants a relationship with Israel.
He wants Israel to trust him. He wants Israel to serve him alone. Because he’s the only one that’s worthy to be served. And according to God’s messenger Isaiah, the thing that will convince Israel to trust God, to place their trust in him as a trustworthy king, to serve him alone as the only one who is worthy, the thing that will bring about that trust and that conviction of serving God is the grace of God. And so Isaiah points forward for us to the grace of God, and forward for us to messengers who would come and proclaim the grace of God to his people, Israel.
And so Isaiah opens this idea up for us in chapter 41st of all. He says that God intends to bring comfort to his people. He intends to make peace with them. He looks at their sin, and he points to the fact that he has paid the price for their sin on their behalf, and so he will come to them. He will bring them into service in his kingdom, like a benevolent kingdom king would do as he wins back his people.
In chapter 40, Isaiah then describes three voices that will proclaim this message of God. The first voice is what we just read about. It’s the voice calling from the wilderness to prepare the way for the Lord to make straight his paths in preparation for the king’s arrival. But there’s two other voices here. The second voice declares the weakness of humanity and our tendency to be so unfaithful to God.
And God recognizes that weakness, that inability that we have innately in our humanity, in our sinfulness, to not remain faithful to God, but despite our unfaithfulness. Isaiah proclaims that God is a faithful goddess, that the voice, the second voice declares that the word of God endures forever, that it will last forever. It is true and it’s trustworthy. And finally, we have a third voice. If you look at verses nine through eleven in Isaiah, chapter 40, we read this.
You who bring good news to Zion, go up on a high mountain. You who bring good news to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with a shout. Lift it up. Do not be afraid. Say to the towns of Judah, here is your God.
See, the sovereign Lord comes with power, and he rules with a mighty arm. See, his reward is with him. His recompense accompanies him. What Isaiah is saying here is that God, despite our unfaithfulness, will come and will create a renewal of our relationship with him. He’ll forgive our sins.
He’ll put things back to right between us in him. And then listen to this. See if this sounds familiar. In verse eleven here, Isaiah says that God tends his flock like a shepherd. Who’s that sound like?
It sounds like Jesus. It sounds like the good shepherd. Isaiah says he gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart. He gently leads those that have young. The gospel authors, they read these words of the prophet Isaiah, and they connected these ideas about God to the life and the ministry and the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
They used these prophecies to understand more fully what God had come to accomplish through his son Jesus. And as they were looking back at the story of Jesus, as they were looking back at the gospel, that gospel message, they see this character of John the Baptist, and they recognize that he too was prophesied about in the Old Testament, that he too was sent by God to point people to Jesus. John was that first voice calling in the wilderness, preparing the way for Jesus. He was the one that would proclaim to those who wished to be faithful to God that they must do the same, that they must proclaim that truth about Jesus from the highest mountain. So John’s arrival was foretold in conjunction with the arrival, the coming of the Lord of Israel, who is a grace filled in a victorious king.
Prophet Malachi, or as one of my Old Testament professors like to call him, Malachi, the italian prophet. It’s not actually Malachi, it’s Malachi. But I can’t, that just lives rent free in my head. So all the way back in Bible college, but Malachi, the prophet also prophesied about John’s arrival preceding the Lord. God spoke through Malachi in Malachi chapter three and said, I will send my messenger who will prepare the way before me.
Then suddenly the lord you are seeking will come to his temple. Who’s that sound like? Sounds like Jesus, doesn’t it? The Lord coming to his temple, the messenger of the covenant whom you desire will come, says the Lord Almighty. John Walton opens up this concept for us in his commentary and says that this idea of a messenger preceding a king probably comes from the ancient near eastern idea of a king who would send his liaison, send his herald, send his messengers ahead of him as he was traveling through his land.
And they would proclaim the greatness and the accomplishments of a king in order to prepare the way. And they would tell the people, the king is coming. You need to prepare for that coming. In some situations, perhaps, a foreign king had come in and conquered a land. And as that king was traveling through that newly conquered land, he would send his messengers ahead to tell the people, prepare the way for the king.
In other words, remove all the obstacles, make way, because the king, the rightful kingdom coming and so we have an injury or an imagery here. An injury, don’t have an injury. We have an imagery here of John proclaiming the arrival of a victorious king. And that’s what John did. He proclaimed the arrival of the victorious king.
Just as John prepared the way for Jesus, then first for his first coming, he removed the obstacles. He pointed people to the arrival of the king, pointed people to Jesus. We are also called to prepare the way for the second coming of King Jesus. The Lord is coming, and his arrival will be announced by messengers who herald his victorious entry on the scene later on in Malachi. In the last words of the Old Testament, actually think about this.
The last two verses of our Old Testament are a message about the coming of Christ. That’s the message that the Old Testament closes on. In Malachi, chapter four, God says through Malachi in verses five and six, 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. J.
Carson calls Elijah the supreme Old Testament prophet. That’s because Elijah boldly rebuked kings and rulers in his day. He preached repentance. He validated his message of the Lord’s coming with signs and miracles from the Lord. He didn’t validate his own message on his own behalf.
He had goddess to do that for him. And John came in that same spirit, that same power of Elijah, to turn hearts toward God and to prepare people for the Lord’s arrival. John’s life was lived to serve the Lord and herald his arrival. And we can live that same kind of life. It’s this idea in Isaiah and in Malachi that God’s people have been conquered by invaders.
In other words, we’ve lost this war. The war that we’ve lost is in our hearts and not turned our hearts toward God. We’ve turned our hearts toward other things. We’ve turned away from God. But God is a victorious king who’s going to reclaim his people for himself.
And as he does so, he enters in as a victorious kingdom, not to the detriment of his people, because he is a good God. He is a good king. As God wins us back in this battle for our hearts, he turns our hearts toward him and he invites us into a relationship with him. He invites us to serve as we ought to in his kingdom, and that is our victorious God. That’s who John pointed the way to.
And that’s who we are called to point the way to as well. As we move from the Old Testament to the New Testament, we see from the very beginning, even before John’s birth, that this was true of him. Luke records the words of the angel Gabriel to Zechariah, John’s father, about him in the temple, Gabriel said of John, he will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. Can you imagine having those words spoken of you?
He’ll be filled with the Holy Spirit before he’s even born. John is the forerunner of Christ. And listen to this in verse 16. This is John’s mission and it should be ours. He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God.
Do we share in that mission of John? Do we share in that mission to John the Baptist, that we will bring many people back to the Lord their God? Gabriel continues. He will go on before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah, fulfilling that prophecy of Malachi to turn the hearts of their parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. What if those words spoken about John were even partially true about us?
How different would our lives be if we lived as beacons for Christ? Luke alone records these circumstances, these things surrounding and foretelling John’s birth. And John’s life is amazing. We’re going to dive deeper next week into the birth of John, but just a few things that we need to pay attention to here. John was born from parents who were both from priestly families.
And Craig Evans in his commentary says that points to the spiritual life that God is connecting with of Israel and the significance of John’s mission in that spiritual life of God’s people. We also see that Elizabeth, John’s mother, was barren and beyond her childbearing years. Throughout the Old Testament we read stories of women who were barren, but they were still being blessed by God and they were able to give birth to children who moved that redemptive story of Goddess along in the scriptures. And so God bless them. And this should point us back to what God has already done in his word.
This should remind us that God has been working in the life of his people all along in similar ways to those that he brought about to proclaim his coming the way that he brought John the Baptist about, ultimately shows us that he pointed to the coming of Christ. Again, like I said, we’re going to dive deeper into those details of John’s origin next week. But for now, it’s important for us to understand that John, John’s birth parallels, at least in Luke, in so many different ways, the birth of Christ. And that teaches us some things about John’s life. Jesus, of course, is the one who plays the primary role in, in our salvation.
But the parallels between the life of Jesus and the life of John tell us that they are two agents. They’re two members of the same team, right? They’re accomplishing the same goal through Christ. And so even before John was born, his life was dedicated to pointing people to Jesus. He lived a life focused on that mission, making Christ known to others.
In a way, if we needed an analogy to kind of wrap our mind around what the life of John was, we could think of that idea of a beacon or of a lighthouse. What does a lighthouse do? It casts light over the water, over the dark, and it shows ships where shore is, and so it shows them a safe way home. And John was that beacon. He was that lighthouse.
He existed to guide people to the safety and the presence of Jesus. Apostle John’s gospel, not John the Baptist gospel, just so we’re not confused there. In the Gospel of John, we read about Jesus, first of all, that the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only son who came from the father, full of grace and truth. And then in verse 15 of chapter one, we read these words, the testimony of John.
John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, this is the one I spoke about when I said, he who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me. This word that’s become flesh, this only one and only son of God is Jesus. He’s the one who John the Baptist said surpassed him because he was before him. In fact, when John saw Jesus later in chapter one, when John sees Jesus coming toward him, he shouts aloud, he points his disciples to him, and it says, in John 129 31, the next day, John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him and said, look, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
This is the one I meant when I said, a man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me. I myself did not know him. But the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel. God was a beacon. He was that lighthouse casting that light of Jesus out into the world, pointing people to Christ.
And in the same way, we should live our lives reflecting that light of Christ, because Christ is alive in us. If we truly believe that Christ is alive in us, is alive in us, how can we not become beacons of that light? How can we not point other people to Jesus when the word is alive in us? Here’s what we learned. If you’re going to take anything away from today’s message, it should be this, that we can prepare the way for King Jesus, just like John did.
That we can prepare the way for King Jesus, just like John did. Paul says it this way. We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do. It’s because of God’s grace that we’re saved through Jesus. We’re saved by grace, the grace of God proclaimed to us and received through faith.
We experience a transformation in our lives when we have Christ in them. And now Paul says, in two corinthians five, we’re a new creation. In Christ Jesus, old is gone. The new has come. And so we live our lives doing these good works which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Paul says, and those works are not the basis of our salvation, but they are the result. They are the evidence of it. And so, once we experience the grace and truth of Jesus, how can we not become those beacons? How can we not shine that light of Jesus out into the world? In Romans ten, Paul says it this way, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
How then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they’ve not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent as it is written? How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.
Are we bringing that good news? We’re called to be beacons, light sharing the good news of Jesus with others. Just like John the Baptist, we are heralds of the kingdom. The difference for us, though, is that John pointed forward to the first coming of Christ. For us, that’s already happened.
Jesus has already come. He’s already conquered sin through the cross. He’s already conquered death through the grave. And so now we are heralds of Christ’s second coming, because Christ will return.
We experience transformation of Jesus incarnation, his first coming in our own lives. And now we await his return. And so in that sense, we are heralds of the returning king right now, John was a herald, pointing people to Jesus as he brought the kingdom of God to earth. And we can point people to Jesus who were returned to bring the completion of God’s redemptive plan to those who follow him. So what do we do?
We prepare the way by making followers of the way. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And we are given a call as followers of Christ to prepare the way by making followers of the way. Jesus is the way. And each of us has a role to play in God’s plan.
Through Jesus, we can make a difference in this world by seeking God’s word, proclaiming his truth, remaining vigilant till his return. And so, for the remainder of our time, I just want to talk about how we can do that, how we can live that kind of life out. How do we put this into practice? It starts by seeking God’s word. We seek God’s word by staying in the scriptures daily.
Reading the Bible, reading the scriptures, studying them, sharing them with others, learning from others in our small groups, in our Bible studies, in our families, using tools from people that have studied God’s word over a lifetime. There are so many tools available to us today to study the word of God. There’s things like commentaries, books. Books upon books have been written about the word of God. But there’s even things you can put things on your phone so you could be reading your Bible app when the emergency tone goes off, right?
There’s the Youversion Bible app, Logos Bible, gateway. There’s so many more. I don’t have time to name them all. Go to Google and search bible app. You’ll find a ton of them.
Ways to study God’s word, to set reminders, to stay diligent in God’s word. You can sign up for right now media through our church for free. So you can study with pastors and teachers. So many people, so many studies that are available on there that you can use on your own or with your small group. We provide daily devotionals.
If you look on the back of the sermon handout, there’s a QR code. There’s a website you can go to on our website, centrallive.net sermons and you can find five weekly daily devotionals for you and your family. There’s group study guides for every sermon that we put out that you can use to study through God’s word. The more we immerse ourselves in God’s word, and the more we seek to understand the truth of his word, the more we can apply it to our lives, the more we can live as Christ intended us to live and proclaim his truth to others. Second thing we need to do as far as remaining in God’s word and seeking his word is we need to live lives of prayer.
Seek God in prayer every single day. I’d encourage you to write down your prayers. One of the best things that I’ve ever done over time is just writing down prayers in journals so I can go back and look at how God has answered those prayers over time. What a great way to testify to what God has done in your life by writing down those prayers. There’s apps for that too, right?
One of my favorites in the last year is called lectio 365. It’s just a daily morning and evening reminder to be in the word of God and in prayer, and they have things that you can read through, listen through that will help you do that. Having a prayer partner is a great way to stay accountable and to grow in prayer. Of course, you can always ask for prayer from others. We talk every week about how how you can use our connection card to share your prayer request with our staff.
And our elders are available after every service to pray with you as well. Those are great ways to connect with others in prayer. And finally, we need to make it a habit of discussing what we believe from the scriptures, what the scriptures teach us, what we would call our theology and our doctrine. We need to discuss those things among each other. And that is what proverbs 27 calls iron sharpening iron.
And if we do this, if we sharpen one another with an attitude of humility, with our best interest of each other in mind, then we will grow. So are we sharpening one another? One of the best places to do that is at home. It can be done as a family, through family devotions, through prayer times with your spouse and your kids, you can attend church together. If you’re married, you can pray for your spouse regularly, read the scriptures together, read biblically based books on your relationship, and seek guidance in your relationship from and people that are wise in the Lord.
Another great way is to join in a small group. We just started our fall season en routed and so you can join a small group through that, or you don’t have to be en routed. There are so many other groups that are meeting that are starting to meet right now that you can join in with to be encouraged and to grow in your ability to speak truth from God’s word. Second thing we need to do is we need to proclaim his truth. Of course, we can’t be beacons of life, of light in Jesus without proclaiming his truth.
And so one easy way to do that is to serve like Jesus served. There’s so many places that we can do that. Jesus didn’t come to be served. He came to serve. And so if we are followers of Jesus, we must recognize that we are also called to serve like Jesus regularly in the church.
Maybe God’s calling you to join in the ministry of the church by getting plugged in with our children’s and youth ministry. Maybe you’ve been attending a small group for a long time, time and God is calling you to lead one. Now you could serve by simply welcoming somebody in the church. Earlier this summer, my wife and I were at a wedding down in Springfield and we went to church down there on a Sunday, the church we’d been to before. And I was just so struck by how welcoming they were.
Now we are an incredibly welcoming church, and this is not to tear down anything that we’re doing here because this is an incredibly welcoming church. But just, it was amazing how welcomed we were. And the thing that really stuck out to me is as we were sitting in the service, a gentleman sat down with his wife in the seat next to us. And he came over to me and he introduced himself and said, hey, are you new around here? And so I said, well, no, we’re just from out of town.
We’re visiting. Said, oh, okay. And kind of struck up a conversation. And I thought to myself, oh, they have people planted out here to do that. But he wasn’t, it was just some random guy, right?
Like it was just some guy that was attending church. And he just took it upon himself to greet me and he didn’t recognize me. So I was like, oh, you must be new. Like, let me interact with you. How amazing would it be?
How welcome would people feel if they walked into church and they just had people greet them, not because they had to, not because they were put up to it, just because they were genuinely interested in welcoming people into the church. We can serve by just doing that. What a great way to serve other people.
We can serve in the community, places like the Salvation army, streeter land food pantry pads in Ottawa and Lasalle, Peru. That’s just to name a few. You can even serve in your family. I know that’s mind blowing, right? We can go home after church and we could serve one another.
And maybe you think, well, I serve enough, right? But we should teach our children and grandchildren to serve, right? But what’s the best way to teach them, other than to show them how to serve by serving our spouses, even serving them, serving other people with them. Finally, we need to remain vigilant for Christ’s return as followers of Jesus. We need to live a lifestyle of watchfulness and readiness for Christ’s return, living each day with purpose and with intentionality.
We need to stay informed and engaged in the world around us, not obsessing over it. There’s a balance here. We got to be careful that we don’t become obsessive over it or anxious because of it, or fearful of it, or even angry because of it. But we have to stay engaged as followers of Jesus with the world around us. And if we believe that God is sovereign, which he is, if we believe that he is in control of history, which he is, then we have no reason to fear.
We don’t have to allow our insecurities become a basis for doubting God. Here’s the thing. Jesus will return, plain and simple, one day. Christ will return. No one except the father knows the day and the hour.
It could be today, it could be tomorrow, it could be after your lifetime. But one thing never changes. We still have to remain vigilant in Christ until his return, or he calls us home. And so I ask you, will you seek God’s word? Will you proclaim the truth of Jesus?
Will you remain vigilant in Christ until his return? Will you become a beacon of light for Jesus, shining his light out into the world, just like John the Baptist did? Will you take seriously your role as an ambassador of Christ and become a herald of his return? God will work through you if you allow him to to prepare the way for Christ’s return. So proclaim that second coming.
Proclaim the victorious king will return, because Jesus will return. Let’s be like John the Baptist. Let’s prepare the way by making followers of the way.