One of a Kind! - Part B

For years the Jewish people had suffered at the hands of those who enslaved them.

The Greeks, the Seleucids, the Ptolemies and now the Romans. Before that they had been taken captive in Babylon and Assyria and so they had for generations suffered the enslavement of people over them. They were crying out for a delivery and historians tell us that just about this time in history messianic expectation reached fever pitch. Welcome to Connect with Skip weekend edition. There's a story told by Spanish Moors about a king who upon receiving word that his beloved home city had fallen marking the end of his rule as king decided that he wouldn't let it be true and so he burned the messages and killed the messenger.

Of course doing all of that didn't change the reality one bit hence the reason you've probably heard the phrase don't shoot the messenger. Well today here in Connect with Skip weekend edition Skip Heitzig examines one of the most unique messengers in all of scripture. He was a man who was assigned a very important task, one that made it easy for some to focus on his greatness rather than the greatness of the message he was trying to deliver. But before we get started with our study today we have a faith building resource for you this month at connectwithskip.com. What stands between you and a more fruitful walk with Jesus? Find out how four prominent women in the bible faced their struggles in a new teaching series from Lenya Heitzig called Queens of the Bible. Here's Lenya on the queen of Sheba. Hearing is the first step toward spiritual blessing.

Right now hearing is a step toward blessing because faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Hear more from Lenya as she explores the faith and the failings of four different queens in scripture. The queens of the bible collection of teachings is our way of saying thank you when you give 35 dollars or more today to support this bible teaching ministry. Look the cost of following Christ is to go wherever he leads.

Get your copy of these unique teachings when you call 800-922-1888 or give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer connectwithskip.com slash offer. We're in John chapter one today so if you turn there in your bibles Skip Heitzig begins by defining an important term. If you were to look up the word great in the Webster's dictionary the definition would be considerably above normal or above average. Another definition would be remarkable. A person who is great is someone who stands out from the rest of the crowd. I was reading a little article that said 92% of baseball players who sign a professional contract with a professional team 92% never see a single major league game.

Now I read it in Harper's magazine I don't know how reliable that is but if that is the case that would mean that only 8% who signed the contract would be considered great baseball players. Sometimes you'll find the word great attached to a name as if it's a formal name like Alexander the Great or in the bible Herod the Great and I discovered in searching 142 different people had the name great attached to them. I'm so-and-so the great. Now whenever a person adds that term to their own name connoting and denoting that they are great it also connotes that everybody else around them is not so great. Not so great. I heard about a man who went to a psychiatrist and said doctor I have an inferiority complex. Doctor read a bunch of tests on him and said well we've ran the tests and it's not a complex.

You really are inferior. Most people would never think of John the Baptist in terms of the word great. The first word that first word that comes to mind for a lot of people when they think of John the Baptist are words like eccentric, odd, strange, out of the ordinary, unconventional, interesting perhaps, but but not great. And yet it was Jesus himself who said I tell you of all who have ever lived none is greater than John. It's quite a statement because John's life wasn't very long. In fact it was short. His ministry was not very extensive. It was in one small little middle east region but the way he lived his life and the choices that he made this man was great. I'm going to read to you a paragraph that comes from a business review.

A New York insurance company business review. Great men it says have but a few hours to be great. Like the rest of us they must dress, bathe, and eat and being human they must make visits to the dentist, doctor, and barber and meet with their wives about domestic matters. What makes men great is their ability to decide what is important and then focus their attention on that. That's exactly what John the Baptist does. He decides what is important and he puts all of his focus and attention on that and it's all summed up by what he's going to say in the paragraphs that we read this morning when John says behold the lamb of God. Now we've already touched on John briefly in the gospel of John. He's mentioned in verse six and seven and when John says the author John says of John the Baptist there was a man sent from God whose name was John. We also read about him in verse 15 but now the prologue is over and now we come to the real story as it is told of John the Baptist and I think what we're going to discover this morning hopefully the big lesson is how can we witness for Christ or how can we represent Jesus Christ before an unbelieving world how can we make a difference how can our life be an impactful life so that we're doing more than just breathing air and taking up space on earth.

What can I significantly do that would promote Christ as a witness and to do that we got to do two things and they're in your outline. First is about your identity and the second is about your activity and we'll discover that using John the Baptist as the mirror we get John the Baptist's identity and his activity. Let's go to verse 19 and we'll see the identity of John the Baptist. Now this is the testimony of John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him who are you he confessed and did not deny but confessed I am not the Messiah the same idea as the word Christ and they asked him what then are you Elijah?

He said I am not. Are you the prophet? He said no and they said to him who are you that we may give an answer to those who sent us what do you say about yourself and he said I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness make straight the way of the Lord. So there's John the baptizer down at the Jordan river baptizing we'll get to that activity in just a moment but a delegation comes from Jerusalem to find out who this guy is and why he's doing what he's doing. Now the group responsible for sending the delegation was called the Sanhedrin you've heard that term maybe the Sanhedrin was a group of 70 rulers in Jerusalem who were in charge of the spiritual warfare I should maybe that is true welfare of the nation. They wanted to protect the nation from any false Messiah that might arise the only problem with that is in protecting the nation from all of the false messiahs they protected the nation from the real messiah who would come and so they sent out a delegation because John the baptist was getting quite a crowd following him multitudes of people were going down and people were listening to him and watching him now I doubt if anybody went out to the Rio grand river and started baptizing people that they would draw that big of a crowd but because of the times they were living in and because of the amount of people that drew interest now the religious community is interested and there's a term I want you to notice in verse 19 you'll need to notice it now because you'll see it a lot in this book it's the word Jews. Jews it's used 71 times by John in this book more than Matthew, Mark and Luke combined but when John uses the term the Jews he is not speaking racially he's speaking formally or legally he's not referring to nationality as much as John is referring to the group of Jewish leaders in Jerusalem who were hostile toward Jesus after all everybody around them in the baptism were Jewish but the Jews here occupies a specific meaning of those hostile toward Christ you'll notice also in verse 19 priests and Levites those are the people in the delegation to find out who John was they were priests and they were Levites now that makes sense because John's dad was a priest Zacharias who worked in the temple John was of the priestly line this makes John the Baptist a pk do you know what a pk is it's a priest's kid in this context he was the son of a priest he was a pk a preacher's kid but John the Baptist was a preacher's kid gone rogue he had left Jerusalem and he's now a preacher out in the desert and Levites and priests never preached they just performed rituals not John they want to find out what his deal is so they ask him a question who are you and it's interesting that they ask him the question and John answers it by telling them first who he's not before he tells them who he is he answers it negatively and then he goes positively so he wants to immediately set their minds at rest and he says I am not the messiah you know why he said that because they thought he was the messiah and the reason they thought John might be their messiah their christ is there was such a high level of anticipation that the messiah would come eminently in their generation and here's why for years the jewish people had suffered at the hands of those who enslaved them the greeks the salucids the tolemies and now the romans and before that they had been taken captive in babylon and asyria and so they had for generations suffered the enslavement of people over them and they were crying out for a deliverer and historians tell us that there was no messianic expectation in Israel. Please tell us that just about this time in history messianic expectation reached fever pitch. I'm going to quote to you a book that I found a little book called the history of messianic speculation in Israel written by rabbi Abba Hillel silver from the first century of the christian era the messianic interest was not excessive the first century however especially the generation before the destruction of the second temple that's right here right now witnessed a remarkable outburst of messianic emotionalism and when Jesus came into Galilee spreading the gospel of the kingdom of God and saying the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand he was voicing the opinion universally held that the age of the kingdom of God was at hand listen to this closing statement the messiah was expected around the second quarter of the first century of the christian era right at this time so he says just to just to clear the air I am not the guy the messiah so they ask him another question well are you Elijah now why would they ask him that well one reason is the way he looked and the way he acted he was so bold in his confrontation and the way he dressed I don't know if you remember Elijah's description in second kings chapter eight it says he was a hairy man who wore a belt a leather belt around his waist so that was Elijah hairy with a belt around his waist John the Baptist comes wearing camel's hair clothing with a leather belt around his waist so they go are you Elijah well Elijah has been dead why would they ask a guy now if he's Elijah here's why the last chapter of the last book of the old testament predicts that Elijah would come before the messiah the last paragraph God says I will send my messenger Elijah before the great and dreadful day of the Lord that is why even to this day you can't go to a Passover feeding a seder feast but that you won't see an empty chair for Elijah just in case he shows up at your Passover which would indicate the messiah is here or coming now he says I am not Elijah are you Elijah I'm not Elijah well now we have a problem and if you're a bible student you know what that problem is because in Matthew 11 Jesus said of John the Baptist this is Elijah who is to come so you got Jesus saying of John the Baptist that's Elijah and you got John the Baptist saying I'm not Elijah moreover before John the Baptist was ever born his father Zacharias got a message from an angel saying you're going to have a son named John and you're going to have a son named John and he will come in the spirit and in the power of Elijah so how do we resolve it well let's see how let's go turn back to Matthew chapter 17 briefly keep a marker where you are and go back to Matthew chapter 17 I wanted to bring this up because I knew I would get questions about it afterwards so to avoid that I'll just answer them right here Matthew chapter 17 verse 10 and his disciples asked him saying why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first now watch this Jesus answered and said indeed Elijah is coming first and will restore all things that's future tense he's saying Elijah as predicted by Malachi is going to come that's what the prophecy says but I say into you verse 12 that Elijah has come already and they did not know him but did to him whatever they wish likewise the son of man is also about to suffer at their hands and then the disciples understood that he spoke to them of John the Baptist you see what's happening John the Baptist came not as the person of Elijah but as the angel said in the spirit and power of Elijah he was an Elijah like forerunner of Christ and so Jesus is saying yep he partially fulfilled that but he didn't totally fulfill it the real person of the prophet Elijah is going to come now when is he going to come well the prophecy says in Malachi 4 before the great and dreadful day of the Lord now that's future that's the great tribulation and I submit to you my opinion that one of the two witnesses recorded in revelation chapter 11 is Elijah the prophet you just read what he does and what he says and it's very much like what Elijah said and did in the old testament so John denies it I am not the Messiah back to John chapter 1 I am not Elijah they ask him a third question are you verse 21 are you the prophet what prophet answer the prophet I don't know which one it is the prophet and he answered no now I say I don't know who it is but I can I can give you a couple guesses according to some of the ancient Jewish writings there was this idea that right before Messiah comes Jeremiah the prophet or Isaiah the prophet would be resurrected and show up in Israel and restore the ark of the covenant to its proper place of worship in the temple maybe they were referring to one of those prophets as the prophet here's another stab at its meaning Deuteronomy 18 verse 15 Moses said the Lord God will send another prophet like me him shall you hear now we believe that and the disciples knew that meant the Messiah himself the prophet who would be the Christ but these Jewish leaders thought the prophet was some other prophet who would come before the Messiah so by this point they're just frustrated at John's very short negative answer you the Messiah nope Elijah the prophet nope and so they press him a little bit verse 22 they said to him who are you that we may give an answer to those who sent us what do you say about yourself now he'll answer their question you won't tell him who he's not he'll tell him who he is I love his answer I love it verse 23 he said to them I am and they probably move forward like yeah yeah and he gives them the answer I am the voice that's it yep I'm the voice I'm not the word he's the word I'm just the voice of the word I'm the voice of one crying in the wilderness I'm a nobody but I'm telling you about a somebody I'm the voice of one crying in the wilderness quoting Isaiah chapter 40 reaching back 700 years make straight the way of the Lord don't you love that I'm just a road worker John said I'm I'm helping get that path straight that you need to walk on to get your lives straight with God that's all I am boy John could have answered that question in a number of ways couldn't he based upon what we know about him and what Jesus said about him he could have said you want to know who I am I'll tell you who I am I am the son of the great priest Zacharias whom you know they would have gone wow that's pretty cool he didn't say that he could have said I'll tell you who I am I am the child who is filled with the Holy Spirit from the womb none of you can say that and they would have said wow John could have said you want to know who I am I'm the greatest guy who ever lived and he would have been right Jesus said that about him I'm the herald of the Messiah of the Messiah but in humility he says I'm just a voice I'm not the message I'm just the messenger the message the word is Jesus I am the messenger well the one who delivers the message is not responsible for the contents of the message hence the old saying don't shoot the messenger in this case it also means that the one delivering the message isn't greater than the one whom the message is about it might have been easy to look at John the Baptist as a powerful important great man but he understood his place in God's great plan we'll continue to explore the importance of John's encounter with Jesus next time and if you'd like a copy of today's teaching it's available for just four dollars plus shipping when you call 1-800-922-1888 or when you visit connectwithskipp.com now here's Skip with what's on his heart today that's right and I'll just say it thank you thank you thank you and I mean that from the bottom of my heart and I share the sentiments of our staff as well your donations help us to share God's word it's as simple as that we believe that the teaching is from scripture it's solid and listeners across the nation and the world have responded to that but I want to invite you especially new listeners to be a part of the work that God is doing your donation will have an eternal impact on countless lives and we know that because of the letters the emails that we get we hear and see change lives and really that's what we live for we live for seeing transformation and I know that's the heart of God well thanks Skip and we'd love to hear how that's playing out in your life right now let us know when you call 1-800-922-1888 or when you visit connectwithskipp.com when Jesus came to see John the Baptist it was an encounter of epic proportions join us again next time to learn more here in Connect with Skip weekend edition a presentation of Connection Communications Connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever-changing times