John 1: 29-34 February 23, 2021
29 The next day he saw Jesus coming towards him
and declared, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! 30This is he of whom I said, “After me comes a
man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” 31I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing
with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.’ 32And John testified, ‘I saw the Spirit
descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. 33I myself did not know him, but the one who sent
me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and
remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” 34And I myself have seen and have testified that
this is the Son of God.’
It’s like John the baptizer is saying, “Hey guys,
remember that really confusing time and value sentence I threw at you back
when? You know, the one who comes after
was before and ranks ahead of me? Yah,
yah, that’s him!” I have this picture of
Jesus, suddenly stopping and looking around, the expression on his face saying
something like “You mean me?” We spent some
time with the formulation of that sentence, so I will not go there again. This is why I continue into the next verse.
John the baptizer and Jesus are related, we know that
from Luke’s gospel. But that may not
look clear from what John says next, “I myself did not know him…” Is John the baptizer saying that Jesus was a
stranger when he showed up to be baptized?
Maybe, but consider the rest of this verse. John the baptizer had a reason for his
baptism. He was baptizing precisely so
the special one, the Messiah, the new Elijah, the prophet, that this person might
be revealed in Israel. I do not think
that John says “I myself did not know him” because his cousin was a stranger. I think he said that because John the
baptizer did not know his little cousin Jesus was the Chosen One.
The next verses will show us the prerequisites that Jesus
fulfilled in his baptism that gained him this recognition from John.
But before we get there, let us take a moment to answer a
question I had not thought of before. Why
was John baptizing at all? These are the
introductions to Jesus’ ministry. He pops
by to lend support to his cousin’s ministry.
Nice thing for him to do. But
according to this verse, what John is doing is deliberate.
John the baptizer was there so that Jesus’ coming could
be properly recognized, so that John could single him out as the ‘one who came
before’ and not just before, but from ‘the beginning’. Maybe this is why John seems so exuberant to
point Jesus out in the street. “This is
the one! This is the guy who came before
and ranks ahead even though he came after!!”
Or something like that. It was
his little cousin Jesus (or his big cousin, maybe John is 5’7” and Jesus is 6’2”).
I would invite you to read Luke 1 to get the background
on John’s birth. He was a miracle baby
himself, a foreshadowing to Mary, the mother of Jesus, of her own miraculous
birth. There is a scene described there that
when Mary showed up and found John’s mother, Elizabeth, very pregnant with him,
that John leapt in the womb. It makes
the gospel narrative very personal to me to consider the possibility that the ‘womb-jumping’
story was part of the lore of the extended family. Maybe John heard that story his whole life
growing up. Maybe as a kid, he got sick
of hearing about it.
But now, in his adulthood, he sees that story fulfilled
in Jesus. Such delight seems to backstop
the telling of these verses.
Because the Bible is not a cold law book. It is far more. It is a collection of stories, including
laws, that speak of real people and a real nation and a real God who works out
a plan of redemption through them.
Pastor Pete
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