The Life of Christ in the Synoptic Gospels
CHRIST’S WITNESS TO JOHN THE BAPTIST
The Life of Christ in the Synoptic Gospels
CHRIST’S WITNESS TO JOHN THE BAPTIST
Lesson Plan:
1. A Believer in Doubt (vs 2, 3)
2. Answer to Doubt (vs 4-6)
3. What Christ Thought of John (vs 7-15)
4. What Christ Thought of the Jews (vs 16-19)
5. What Does Christ Think of You?
Lesson Setting:
Time: The summer of 28 A.D., soon after the Sermon on the Mount According to Luke, Christ had just
raised the son of the widow in the city of Nain.
Place in the Life of Christ: About the middle of the second year of His public ministry.
Inductive Study of the Lesson:
a. Read the lesson, with the parallel passage, Luke 7:19-35
b. In illustration of "he that cometh" (v 3) see Revelation 1:4, 7; Psalm 118:26
c. In connection
with vs 4, 5 read Isaiah 35:5, 6; 61:1-3
d. Concerning preaching to the poor see Isaiah 61:1; Luke 4:18-21
e. In connection with v 9 read
Matthew 14:5; John 1:21,25
f. Read the prophecies relating to John the Baptist, Malachi 3:1-3; 4:5,6; also the New Testament
references to them, Matthew 17:10-13; Mark 1:2-4; Luke 1:13-17; John 1:6-8, 21, 23
g. In illustration of the personification of wisdom in verse 19 read Proverbs 8, 9
The Kind of Man Christ Can Praise
Introduction: What is the most important question we can ask regarding ourselves? – Worldly men
would say that it is, 'What do men think of me?' Certainly what men think of us has much to do with
our worldly advancement and success. But a question far more important than that, the most
momentous of all questions for us is, 'What does Christ think of me?' What will be His verdict
regarding my life? Will it be 'Well done?' Or, will it be, 'I never knew you?' The answer
to this question determines our real advancement in this world, the only success that amounts to
anything, and it determines our fate for all eternity. Surely therefore, we have a weighty theme as
we study what kind of man Christ praises and what kind of man He condemns, under the following
outline: A Believer In Doubt (vs 2, 3); Answer To Doubt (vs 4-6); What Christ
Thought of John (vs 7-15); What Christ Thought of the Jews (vs 16-19); What Does Christ Think
of You?
Scripture Reading: Matthew 11:2, 3
1. A Believer in Doubt
Who did Christ praise more highly than any other man? John the Baptist, His cousin according to the flesh, who, brought up a Nazarite in the wise home of Zacharias and Elisabeth, had become a mighty preacher of righteousness. Why praise him? Because John had rebuked sin fearlessly, had led a pure and holy life of great simplicity and self-restraint, and had had the insight to see in Jesus the long-expected Messiah and to point men to him first of all, even sending away his own disciples to the new teacher. Was His praise of John strange? Yes, because John had fallen into doubt of Christ, and the occasion of Christ's praise was the disclosure of that doubt through John's question, "Art thou really the Messiah?"
What prompted John to ask that question? – Three basic reasons have been put forward and seem possible: (a) John was getting weary in his prison and out of heart. (b) He wished Christ Himself to confirm the faith of his disciples. (c) He wished to induce our Lord in some way to declare Himself. Each of these theories have earnest advocates, but probably most believe the first to be the likely reason. Christ's answer is directed to John, and the very praise of John that follows it seems to be intended to remove the bad impression that would be left by such an expression of doubt. No more unfortunate question, coming from John, could have been propounded to Jesus at this moment, and under these circumstances. It said to the people that the man whom they had regarded as one of the greatest of the prophets, who had introduced Jesus to public life in a season of great excitement, now that he had time for cool reflection, had begun to doubt the mission of Jesus. Do you think John's question could perhaps have been a blow to the heart of Jesus? After all, it was coming from our Lord's best friend.
What could have brought John into a state of doubt? – While no one knows, still a combination of causes seem probable: (a) Because he had rebuked Herod Antipas for his glaring sins, i.e., the abandonment of his wife and the taking of his broth Philip's wife, Herodias, Herod had shut him up in the gloomy fortress of Machaerus. This lonely prison was among the mountains of Moah, on the brink of a great precipice, above the steaming hot fountains of Callirrhoe, facing the Dead Sea, in the midst of a scene of most remarkable natural desolation. The surroundings would be enough in themselves to cause depression. (b) Moreover, John was a Bedouin of the desert taken from the open air and put in prison. He lost the rush of the water over the fords of the Jordan, the song of birds, the rising and setting sun. In prison, his muscles would certainly relax and his lungs would in time lost their power, and the trouble of the body usually in time reaches the soul. (c) John may have felt that Christ was neglecting him, for he was only a hundred miles away. Why did he not use some of His miraculous power for the deliverance of His cousin and herald? (d) John was tempted to think of his own life as a failure. He had proclaimed the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. The axe was to be laid at the very root of the tree of evil. These were John's expectations, but what did he see? Where were the axe, the fan, the fire? The adulterous Herod still lorded it in his palace; while here, in the dungeon of the palace, lay the forerunner of the Messiah, a prisoner. Pharisaism, that unclean nest of vipers, was still undisturbed. Where was the promised kingdom? (e) But v 3 indicates still another reason as most important.
Illustration: "Savonarola, and Jerome of Prague ... were men whose courage, like that of John the Baptist, had enabled them to stand unquailing before councils and threatening kings: will any one, in forming an estimate of their goodness and their greatness, add one shade of condemnation because of their wavering in the prison-cells of Florence and Constance.... Yet, to John the Baptist imprisonment must have been a deadlier thing ..." (Farrar).
v 3 ... "when John had heard ... the works of Christ" Only then did John send his disciples with the question. The ideals of Jesus diverged so widely from those of John, that the Baptist, hearing of them only by report, would have a difficulty in understanding them. Christ's tender and gracious ministry was far different from the picture of a militant, conquering Messiah that John no doubt had imaged to himself.
In his doubt and depression, what wise course did John take? – He went right to Christ Himself with his trouble, and thus took the surest way to relieve himself of it. And as he could not go in person,
v 2 ... "he sent two of his disciples," who had remained faithful to him in all his trials, and by them asked the great question,
v 3 ... "Art thou he that should come," a common and well understood description of the Messiah,
v 3 ... "or do we look for another?" The general expectancy may be perceived in the fact that at the beginning of the Christian era there were no less than fifty-eight spurious Messiahs. This is the common question of all dispirited and discouraged Christians. Has the Lord Jesus really come to me, or am I to look for some other experience of His coming? All doubt narrows down to the same question, since if Jesus was not God manifested in the flesh, certainly no such manifestation has ever been made.
Scripture Reading: Matthew 11:4-6
2. Answer to Doubt
Christ answered John's question: First by action (Lk.7:21). In the presence of John's messengers He performed many miracles, including the healing of Demoniacs and the blind. Nothing that the messengers might learn from others would be as convincing as what they saw with their own eyes. Our Lord's second answer: This answer was in words, a reminder to John of the miracles which the Messiah was to work according to prophecies with which John was familiar. Those very miracles Christ had just performed before their eyes. This reply show the importance attached by Jesus to His own miracles. The world requires a divine Savior; and that Jesus Christ is He is proved partly at least by His miracles, especially by the miracle of His resurrection.
Why Jesus did not plainly say, 'Yes, I am the Messiah'? – Because in that case John the Baptist would have accepted His verdict; but he would have accepted it blindly, and his doubts would have remained unresolved. He would have been haunted still by harassing uncertainty. God has not given us reasoning faculties and then stifled and stultified them by leaving them no room in which to work; on the contrary, He is ever urging us on into larger use of our reason. Christ did not tell John to do less thinking, but more.
Illustration: A fine piece of tapestry was once stolen, but found by police. It was proved to be same piece by comparing the holes made by the hooks on which it hung. Thus Jesus is proved to be the Messiah by comparing His life, point by point, with all the prophecies concerning Him as well as with the universal longings of the human race.
Illustration: An atheist asked an Oriental Christian, 'How do you know there is a God? He received this answer, 'How does one know whether it was a man or a camel that passed my tent last night?' He knows by the footprints. Then he pointed to the setting sun and asked, 'Whose footprint is that?' Look at the footprints of Christ; see whether they are a man's or God's. Whose prints are those by the gate of Nain, by the grave of Bethany, coming away from the tomb of Joseph of Arimathaea? Whose prints are those by the doors of sorrow, along the path where the leper, the blind, the lamb, the demoniac waited for Him? These proofs are continued by the modern miracles of conversion, and all the disclosures of God's wonderful power made by science.
What was the climax of Christ's answer? – Something of which no one but Jesus Christ would have thought, that ...
v 5 ... "the poor have the gospel preached to them." The preaching of good tidings to the poor is coupled with the raising of the dead as the most convincing evidence of all. It was a new thing that the poor, who were commonly neglected and despised as worthless and ignorant, should be invited into the Kingdom. This also had been foretold of the Messiah. Christ sprang from a poor family, His disciples were poor men, He lived with the poor and performed His miracles freely for them, teaching them as willingly as He taught Nicodemus. Today it is only Christian lands that men pity the poor and try to lift them from their affliction in the name of the Master.
Our Lord's concluding word for John: A word of warning, "Blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me" (Matt. 11:6). 'Be offended' means (note R.V.) 'Made to stumble,' i.e., into unbelief, always used of one who has been attracted by Jesus up to a certain point. Jesus did not with to wound the imprisoned prophet as that friend had wounded Him. He was grander than even the grand John. Instead of saying, 'Woe to him who is offended in me,' He puts it in the soften way, 'Blessed is he who is not offended.' Thus He closed an answer which, in its conclusive facts, its logical implications, and its sweet but royal appeal, must have driven all doubt from the mind of John, and should do the same for every other doubter to the end of time.
Scripture Reading: Matthew 11:7-15
3. What Christ Thought of John
Why did Jesus wait until the messengers departed to state what He thought of John? – Could it be because He might then have been accused of flattery? However, Jesus would not have the bystanders think that He was offended by John's message, or that it implied a vacillating weakness in John. When people have departed, the language which breaks out behind their backs about them and their friends is too frequently of a questionable order. But how different was Jesus, and what an example He has left us in this as in other particulars.
What in John's character did Christ's three questions point? – (a) Of John's firmness, of which his imprisonment was an abundant proof. He was no "reed shaken with the wind" (v 7), no man of fickle mind, easily turned aside from his purposes. The question would recall to the listening crowd Jordan with its reedy, wind-swept banks, the strong, rapid stream by which they had listened to the prophet's call, and in which they had been plunged for the remission of their sins. The reed of Egypt and Palestine is a very tall cane, growing twelve feet high, with a magnificent panicle of blossom at the top, and so slender and yielding that it will lie perfectly flat under a gust of wind, and immediately resume its upright position. (b) Christ's listeners were reminded of John's simple, unselfish, hardy nature: he was no man "clothed in soft raiment" (v 8), but he was content with rough camel's hair garments and a leather girdle; and he was no courtier, frequenting "kings' houses" (v 8), but he was languishing in the king's prison. (c) Finally, Christ's hearers were reminded that John was "a prophet" (v 9), that is, a great religious leader and teacher. Indeed, Christ declared John to be "more than a prophet" (v 9), because the prophets themselves predicted John's coming as the messenger before the face of the Messiah, the second Elijah (v 14), and because "all the prophets and the law prophesied unto John" (v 13), but in him Messianic prophecy closed, for John alone was able to point to the Messiah's actually coming.
Illustration: The boy that cannot say 'No,' when other boys tease him to smoke, drink or use drugs or go places where he ought not go, is only a reed shaken with the wind. The girl who is influenced by frivolities and worldly pleasures, and drawn away from Christ, and from a noble, pure, beautiful life, is another reed.
Summing up, what was Christ's estimate of John? – That "among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater" (v 11), A sentence well worth going to prison for, meeting death for. John may have had peers, but no superiors. Who may be classed with him we cannot say; but probably Abraham, Moses, Paul. No brighter star shines in the celestial firmament than that of this brief young life.
Why did Christ say "that he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he" (v 11)? – Because it is better to enter the kingdom that to herald its coming. The dwarf on the shoulders of the giant sees further than the giant; and the least in the kingdom, being nearer to Jesus Christ that the men of old could ever be, because possessing the fuller revelation of God in Him, is greater than the greatest without.
Illustration: A little blade is greater than the seed out of which it came, the tiniest child born yesterday is greater than the grandest sculpture ever chiseled by Phidias or his successors, the smallest flower that blows is greater than the finest artificial plant that ever was fashioned by the most cunning fingers. He that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he that is greatest in the kingdom below. No wonder the faithful Christian desire to grow in Christ.
Illustration: Besides the popular excitement, which John's method of terror aroused, appeared to Jesus a method of violence (v 12), which did not bring gain, but loss, to His cause. Those in Christ's kingdom are greater than John the Baptist because they have learned a better way of winning men, the way of gentleness, peace, and love.
Scripture Reading: Matthew 11:16-19
4. What Christ Thought of the Jews
With whom does Christ contrast John? – The Pharisees and lawyers (Lk. 7:30), the so-called upper classes of the Jews, who would not follow John and the common people and sinners like the publicans in their acceptance of the Messiah, but in haughty self-conceit rejected the divine Savior of the world.
To what does Christ liken these Jewish leaders? – Children refusing to be pleased. They blamed John for fasting and Jesus for eating with people, mixing in their society. Christ remembers some old game of weddings and funerals that the Nazareth children perhaps played when He was a little boy. "You are like a set of sulky children, who won't play any game; while others call to you and say, 'We played weddings, and you would not join; we played funerals, and you still kept away.'" Like children who cannot be pleased.
Who follows the heaven-sent guides? – Children of “wisdom." (v 19). Wisdom has been ever "justified" (v 19) at her children's hands. These children have not disgraced their divine original. The children of wisdom recognize and honor her whether in the austere garb of John the Baptist or in the more attractive style of his Master.
5. What Does Christ Think of You?
How can you know what Christ thinks of you? – (a) By studying the Bible, which is the revelation of the mind of Christ. As its ideals become implanted in your heart, you will have a measuring standard for yourself. (b) By meditation and prayer. In the still hour Christ's Holy Spirit will show you your true self, i.e., what you are and what you may become. (c) By comparing yourself with those whom you know to be Christ's true followers, well pleasing to Him. Have you obeyed the Gospel? Do you fervently pray? For forgiveness and others? Are you honest and sensible? Then you need not be in doubt regarding Christ's opinion of you.
How can you win Christ's constant praise? – The way He laid down, the way of obedience. It is the only way. "Ye are my friends, if ye do the things which I command you." Christ's commands are perfectly plain, and the path to His approval is perfectly clear.
What about mistakes? – You will never be able to entirely avoid making mistakes, not in this world. And now comes the comfort contained in this lesson. John the Baptist received this wonderful praise, placing him on an equality with the greatest of all that had gone before him, immediately after he had made the biggest mistake of his life. Christ knows your frame; He always remembers that you are dust. All He wants of you is a sincere reliance on Him, so that, even in the midst of your failures and temptations and doubts, you shall turn to Him for help out of them as did John the Baptist. And you shall never turn in vain. There is a real and abiding grandeur in the steady love of good and the steady scorn of evil. The man who by God's grace has made himself true and virtuous, the man who is pure, and brave, and kind, and watchful, and self-reliant, and diligent, and thorough, and a good soldier and servant of Jesus Christ, that man is one whom God and man alike will, in the long run, delight to honor. Aim at this, and you cannot fail.
