In this section is the introduction of John the Baptist. Dr. Sproul discusses John's application of a ritual cleansing called baptism. Dr. Sproul then goes on to explain the type of back to some and its relationship to the various Levitical washings. The priests and Levites assumed that John was claiming to be Christ but he denied it they then asked him if he was Elijah. John responded he is not and was then asked if he was the prophet and John responded with no. Dr. Sproul concludes with John stating his unworthiness to undo the Messiah's sandal and its meaning.

Our Scripture lesson today comes from the gospel according to Saint John. I will be reading from John 1:19–28:

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 Christ.”

And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?”

He said, “I am not.”

“Are you the Prophet?”

And he answered, “No.”

Then they said to him, “Who are you, that we may give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself?”

He said: “I am

‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
“Make straight the way of the Lord”’

as the prophet Isaiah said.”

Now those who were sent were from the Pharisees. And they asked him, saying, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”

John answered them, saying, “I baptize with water, but there stands One among you whom you do not know. It is He who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose.”

These things were done in Bethabara beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

He who has ears to hear the Word of God, let him hear it. Shall we pray?

Our Father, we thank You for Your Word that comes to us from Your own lips, and we pray that we may hear this day the testimony of John. For we ask it in Jesus’ name and for His sake. Amen.

John the Baptist

Last time, in the prologue to John’s gospel, we considered the question of the identity of Jesus. After John gives us that background to set forth his portrait of Jesus, he immediately moves from the prologue to a brief summation of the ministry and testimony of John the Baptist.

Unfortunately, in the church, John the Baptist is one of the most neglected people in all of sacred Scripture, which was certainly not the case in the first century. This man attracted enormous attention from his contemporaries, the Jewish people of that time. Amazingly, the secular historians of the first century gave more attention to John the Baptist than they did to Jesus. This is because Israel’s history of having prophets sent from God ended with the last canonical prophet of the Old Testament, whose name was Malachi.

For four hundred years, there was not a peep out of God. The office of prophet ceased after Malachi until it was renewed again with this strange and bizarre figure coming out of the desert—the traditional meeting place between God and His prophets—beginning a new and radical prophetic ministry. In a short time, John the Baptist’s activity attracted the attention of the religious authorities in Jerusalem. So, they sent a delegation to find out who he was and what he was about.

The Children of Abraham Unclean

Now a further word of preface: Among the Jews in the intertestamental period, there was the practice of proselyte baptism, of which I have spoken before. In the case of gentiles who converted to Judaism, they were considered unclean, and so they had to undergo a purification rite—take a bath, as it were—to be welcomed and received into the covenant community of Israel.

In that procedure of proselyte baptism, it was the convert who baptized himself. He was not baptized by the priests or the Levites. All other purification rites in Israel were done by the priests. So, here we have someone who is not a gentile convert or a priest, and yet he is involved in the activity of baptism.

The other place where we find baptism in this period of history was among a sect called the Essenes. They were a monastic community that lived near the caves of Qumran and were responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls. They practiced a form of baptism that had eschatological significance. I know that is a seventeen-dollar word, but the term eschatological has to do with the eschaton, which is the Greek word for the “last times” or “last things.” Those Jewish people who looked to the future coming of the day of the Lord associated their ideas and beliefs with the practice of baptism.

Here is what it was about. John came as a Jew to Jews, calling the people of Israel to receive this rite of cleansing while he is making his sermonic announcement: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2). John is saying: “A crisis moment in history is at hand. His fan is in His hand. The ax is laid at the root of the tree. The coming of the Messiah is not going to be in some distant, unknown future, but He is at the door. Any minute, He is going to come.” What John is saying to Israel is this: “You’re not ready for Him. You’re unclean.” He calls Jewish people to submit to a ritual of cleansing that heretofore was limited to pagans and gentiles.

You can imagine how upset the Jewish rulers were. They were thinking, “Who does this man think he is, calling us, the children of Abraham, to a cleansing rite?” They wanted to know what was going on, so they sent a delegation to him. Listen to this interrogation and how John the Baptist responded, because it is important to the whole gospel of John that we understand this passage.

Not the Christ

The delegation from the priests and Levites came to John and asked, “Who are you?” Notice the awkward construction of verse 20: “He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed.” Is that not awkward? It is even worse if you look at it in the Greek. It is even hard to translate it because it is so convoluted. “He confessed and did not deny.” Let me give you a sense of that.

When Martin Luther was brought before the Diet of Worms in the sixteenth century and interrogated about his writings and teachings, he was called to recant of his views of justification. When he tried to explain his views, he was cut off mid-sentence by his interrogators. They said: “Brother Martin, answer us directly, ‘without horns,’ without any evasive techniques or craftiness. Just give us a straight answer.” So it was at that time that Luther said, “If you want an answer without horns, here it is: Unless I am convinced by sacred Scripture or by evident reason . . .”

That is the same thing John is saying in this convoluted passage when it says, “He confessed and did not deny.” This is the strongest way the Greek can show us how emphatic John the Baptist was in saying, “I am not the Christ.” In fact, John had come on to the scene of history to make a public confession about who was the Christ.

Only a few moments after this, John says, “There’s one in your very midst, and you don’t even know Him yet. He’s the One who comes after me, who was before me.” But I am getting ahead of myself.

Return of the Prophet

John says emphatically, “I am not the Christ.” The interrogators say: “Okay, then who are you? Are you Elijah?” Why did they ask him that? Again, the last canonical prophet in the Old Testament was Malachi. In the last chapter, the last paragraph, and the very last prophecy of the book of Malachi and of the Old Testament, what does Malachi say? He tells us that the day of the Lord is coming, but it will not come until God first sends Elijah to announce it.

That is why the Jewish people were waiting for the return of Elijah, because the Old Testament said that the Messiah cannot come until Elijah comes first. So, they see John acting as a prophet, dressed like Elijah, behaving like Elijah, and they say, “Are you Elijah?” What does he say? “No.” That produces a problem, because when Jesus spoke about John the Baptist in Matthew 11, what did He say? He said to His disciples, “If you can bear it, this was Elijah, who was to come.”

Elsewhere in the Gospels, we are told that John the Baptist came in the power and spirit of Elijah. Because John was endowed with the power of Elijah, came in the spirit of Elijah, and fulfilled the ministry of Elijah, Jesus gave that cryptic introduction, “If you can bear it”—that is, in a special sense, this was Elijah. This was the fulfillment of that Old Testament prophecy, even though John the Baptist personally was not Elijah. So, John is not lying when he answers them, “No, I’m not Elijah.”

The Jews say, “If you’re not Elijah, are you the Prophet?” Notice that the question is not, “Are you a prophet?” It is rather, “Are you the Prophet?” Who is that? To answer that, we must go back to the book of Deuteronomy, where the Word of God tells us that in the last times God will raise up a prophet like Moses (Deut. 18:15, 18). For centuries, the Jewish people were not only waiting for Elijah’s return but also looking for that special prophet who would be like Moses.

Remember the uniqueness of Moses, that he was not only a prophet, but he was the mediator of the Old Testament. A prophet like Moses would be a prophet who mediates, but the new mediator, the mediator of the New Testament, is Christ. They were waiting for one like Moses, and they looked at John and said, “Are you the one like Moses?” He said: “No. I’m not the Christ. I’m not Elijah, and I’m not the prophet like Moses.”

The Fulfillment of Isaiah

The Jews continue their questioning: “Well, then who are you?” I think it is fascinating how John finally answers the question. The Jews had gone to the Old Testament, looking at Malachi and Deuteronomy. Now John goes back to the Old Testament and quotes directly from the fortieth chapter of the prophet Isaiah.

I think John’s quotation of Isaiah is significant for this reason: When Jesus gives His first recorded sermon, He comes into the synagogue and is invited to comment on the reading from the scroll of that day, from the prophet Isaiah. If you remember, they read the scroll, and the scroll says: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has anointed me to give release to the captives, to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the sick,” and so on.

After the scroll is read, Jesus, as the visiting rabbi, is invited to give a sermon on the text—the shortest sermon ever. Jesus comes to the front and says, “This Scripture is fulfilled today, in your midst.” That was the end of the sermon. What was He saying? “I’m the One who has been anointed to be the Messiah.”

Before Jesus reads from Isaiah 61, John quotes Isaiah 40, and he says: “Do you want to know who I am? I’m the one who the prophet Isaiah talked about in his book when he said, ‘I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord.”’”

Have you ever been to Israel? Have you ever seen the sand dunes blown to and fro by the winds that lower them out into valleys and raise them up into hills? The prophecy of Isaiah was this: Before the Messiah would come into the world, He would send His messenger, and the messenger would proclaim to the people: “Build a road. A tunnel, if necessary. Knock down the hills. Fill in the ditches. Make the road straight that is the highway for our King. Build the King’s highway.”

God had promised His people that someday the King’s highway would be built, as the King entered the midst of His people. John says: “Do you want to know who I am? That’s who I am. I’m here to tell you to build the highway of the King.”

Look to Him, Not to Me

John the Baptist goes on to make another statement. The Jews ask him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” John answers: “I baptize with water, but there stands One among you whom you do not know. It is He who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose.” That is an idiom, an expression used by the Jews: “Loosing the strap of the sandal.”

Here is the significance of that idiom: If you were a disciple of a rabbi, as Jesus’ disciples were, you attended his lectures and learned the lessons he taught. Not only this, but you may notice that Jesus often sent the disciples into town to get food or to make sure that a room is reserved, as when He held communion in the upper room.

When disciples entered rabbinic training and attached themselves to a rabbi, they took on the role of a servant. The disciple functioned as the personal slave of the rabbi and took care of all his needs. They made his housing arrangements, got his food, and many other things.

The one thing that differentiated a rabbinical disciple from an actual bondslave was that the disciple was never required to take care of the sandals of their teacher. Slaves could be reduced to that humiliating task, but not the disciple. John is saying: “I’m not even worthy to unstrap His sandals. Don’t look at me. I’m lower than a disciple. I’m lower than a slave. I’m not even worthy to untie His shoes, take off His sandals, or clean His feet. Don’t look to me. Look to Him.”

That is why John puts this story at the beginning of the gospel. He is focusing our attention not on John the Baptist but on the One whom John announces, telling the people, “It’s time to make straight the highway of our God.”

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.