John 1

John 1:1-34

CHRIST AND JOHN THE GREAT PROPHETJoh_1:1-34. Compare Matthew 11:7-9; Matthew 11:11. TO three volumes dealing with the subject of Prophet, I acknowledge special obligation. According to one of these the Prophet of God is “an educated man” who goes with the drift of his times, and who fraternizes with his fellow-ministers without reference to the creeds which they follow; a man who sees no difference between Trinitarianism and Unitarianism, but believes them “the two wings of faith” that ought to “beat in unison” to make the “flight” of the Church possible. When I had finished such a definition of the Prophet, my soul hungered for something substantial, and that I found in the two other volumes to which I have just referred.As I approach, therefore, this great theme, “Christ’s Ideal Prophet”, I feel impelled to speak alike by the sting of Liberalism on the one side, and the inspiration of Scripturalism on the other. This passage from John may be best interpreted in the light of Mat 11:7-9; Matthew 11:11.According to our text, John the Baptist was a Prophet of God, never surpassed. Let us study The Man, The Mission, and His Message.THE MANPaintings of John the Baptist are multitudinous. In the judgment of the great masters, his face occupies a place second only to that of the Christ. You will note, however, that we have no portrait of his person by the pen of inspiration, save, Matthew 3:4,“And the same John had his raiment of camel’s hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey”. There are, nevertheless, three great statements shining forth from the sacred page: He was a man; he was sent from God; he was a great Prophet.He was a man. “There was a man”. Angels might announce the birth of Jesus; a bright star might direct to His manger cradle, but God selected a man to announce the Master’s ministry. The office of a prophet has never been committed to another. People sometimes speak of the men who have “honored” the prophet’s office, and mention Peter and Paul, Clement or Calvin, Luther or John Knox, Wyclif, or Huss, or Edwards, Spurgeon or Parker. The truth lies in the opposite direction. Each of these men lived in the unending wonder that God should have honored him by an appointment to the office of prophet.

As Jowett says of Paul: “He seemed to catch his breath every time he thought of his mission. Next to the infinite love of his Saviour, and the amazing glory of his own salvation, his wonder is arrested and nourished by the surpassing glory of his own vocation.” Paul voiced what every true preacher from his day has felt when he said, “Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ”.

If flesh and blood is denied inheritance in the Kingdom of God, it has enjoyed an unspeakable glory in the privilege of proclaiming the Kingdom of God.Dr. Geo. A. Gordon tells us, “There is a tradition in England to the effect that when an Englishman has three sons he selects the bravest and educates him for the navy; the next, if he seem stupid, but brave, he educates for the army, and the third, if he seems to be good for nothing, he prepares for the church.” God’s method with His ministers is exactly the opposite. He selects the brightest and best, but by putting them into the office of prophet, honors them a thousand times beyond their deserts. Not an archangel but must have coveted the honor bestowed upon the man—John the Baptist.He was sent from God!

The True Prophet always is. The remark, “Congregations mould preachers”, is all too true!

Let us put over against it the converse and more blessed truth, that God makes prophets. The remark, “Great preachers will appear when the churches demand them”, is only true in the light of its context. But great prophets appear when God appoints them. It is, in ministers, sometimes true that the “congregations get what they want”. It is always true that God sends only the prophets the people need. As one writes, “There is a door into this sheep-fold, and there is some other way.” A man may enter the ministry as a result of merely personal calculation; choose it as a profession, considering its social distinction, its chance for cultivated leisure, coveted leadership, and attractive publicity.

His constraining motive may be ambition, his desire, fame, his hope, a name to live.Such motives never made a prophet. Truly, “The call of the Eternal must ring through the rooms of his soul as clearly as the sound of the morning bell rings through the valleys of Switzerland, calling the peasants to prayer and praise. * * The candidate for the ministry must move like a man in secret bonds.

Necessity is laid upon him. His choice is not a preference among alternatives. He has no alternative. There is only one clear call sounding forth as the imperative summons of God.” John heard that call! Let no man enter the prophet’s office who has not heard it!The thing that made Amos a prophet was not “insight, sincerity, sympathy, and natural speech”, but holy fire, kindled in the herdsman’s heart by the Holy Ghost; the impelling motive of his ministry was not that he thought it “worth while to strive to become great”, but personal experience: “The Lord took him as he followed the flock, and said, Go prophesy”! The thing that made Isaiah a preacher was not his ability to give “luminous interpretation of the life and work of the Lord, and the moral history of human beings”, nor yet his “outcry for abiding inspiration in the service of the ideal”; but the experience that came to him, when in sorrow over the death of King Uzziah, God spoke to him, saying, “Who will go for Us”?The thing that made Jeremiah a prophet was not that he had a desire to be “lifted to higher levels of thought, sustained by purer motives and set going on a mountain path”; but rather the circumstance that “before he came forth out of the womb, God sanctified him and ordained him a preacher”.

The thing that made Jonah successful in the streets of Ninevah was neither his native eloquence nor his wavering courage, nor his impelling convictions; but the voice of the Lord ringing in his ears, “Go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee”. The thing that made Paul a Prophet of God was not his education at the feet of Gamaliel, nor his legal eloquence, nor even his mastery of the Old Testament Scriptures; but his Divine ordination as “a preacher and an apostle, * * a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and verity”.

The schools of the twentieth century are making many ministers—every Prophet of God holds office by Divine appointment. As was John, so every true Prophet is another “man sent from God”.He was a great Prophet! The declaration is, “Among them that are horn of women, there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist”. What made him great? The answer to that question may mark the way for his successors, and it may furthermore instruct the hearts of the people so that they shall discern the man of God when he appears. Newell Dwight Hillis says truthfully, “Every prophet has three characteristics. He is a seer and sees clearly. He is a great heart and feels deeply.

He is a hero and dares valiantly!”Apply these tests to John! He rises to meet every one of them. Apply them to the modern prophets! The majority fall before them. School valedictories do not always give promise of spiritual vision. Supurb culture is not always associated with pronounced sympathy. The royal road of learning does not always lead to love of righteousness. You can have an educated Ingersoll—a prophet of infidelity, and an uneducated Moody—a prophet of God.

This is not to inveigh against education! God’s prophets have always been its patrons and apostles; but it is to remind a scholastic and egotistical age of the Scriptural fact that Christ has not as yet surrendered the prerogative of making “prophets and apostles, and evangelists and pastors and teachers”, to the public schools and state universities, nor even to the skeptical professors who teach a Jericho theology under cover of Christian denominationalism. There is just as much difference between the most noted minister the schools can make and the Prophet of God, as there was between a Theodore Parker and a Joseph Parker; just as much difference as there was between a Burnam Foster and a John Foster. The public will pardon the personalities in the interest of pointed truth.THE MISSION Again let the first chapter of John instruct us. The Scriptures of our study make clear three important thoughts. He is to prepare the way for Christ; he is to proclaim the Word of God; he will, incidentally, reprove the enemies of Jesus.He is to prepare the way for Christ. “The same came for witness, that he might bear witness of the light, that all men might believe through him. He was not the light, but came that he might bear witness of the light” (John 1:7-8). His own conception of his own ministry was expressed after this manner, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord” (John 1:23).John the Baptist is the unbreakable link between the Old Testament formalities and the New Testament faith. You will remember Jesus, in answer to a lawyer’s question, reminded his auditors of God’s promise, “I will send unto them Prophets and Apostles” (Luke 11:49).

John the Baptist effectively fills both offices. He was a Prophet of the Old Testament type, born after its time, and an Apostle of the New— born before his time.

By an appeal to the word of his predecessors—the Old Testament Prophets—he was to point to the Lamb of God, coming now to take away the sins of the world, and thereby prepare the way for Him. In John was fulfilled again the description of the Prophet which had become proverbial with Isaiah in olden times, namely, when a man inquired of God, they said, “Come and, let us go to the seer: for he that is now called a Prophet was beforetime called a Seer” (1 Samuel 9:9). As a Prophet, he was a Seer. He saw the words of his brother prophets fulfilled; he proclaimed the first coming of Christ. He said, “The sin-bearer is at hand—Repent!”Jowett has a fine and original passage, interpreting the prophetic description of our Master’s mission recorded in Isaiah (Isaiah 61:1): “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me: because the Lord hath appointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek: He hath sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound”. He says this, “Look at the cardinal words in the passage—’preach’, ‘heal’, ‘deliver’, ‘give liberty’, ‘proclaim’.

Can we extract the common virtue of the words? Have they any general significance?

Is there any common denominator? May we not say that in all these varied words there is a pervasive sentiment and purpose of emancipation? Are they not all suggestive of an opening, an emergence, a release? Let us review the words, ‘sent to preach’—to give the grace of comfort to those who are crushed beneath the unintelligible weight of sorrow and care (he should have added, “and sickness”); ‘to deliver the captive’—to give the open spaces of a noble freedom to all who languish in any form of unholy servitude; ‘to set at liberty them that are bruised’—to give open passage to all who are lying with broken wing or broken limb, to all whose powers have been shattered by disappointment and defeat; ‘to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord’—to announce the open door in the present hour and to say that by God’s grace there is a present right-of-way from the deepest gloom of the soul into the radiant light of acceptance with God. In all these words there appears to be this general sense of emergence and release. There is an opening of mind, an opening of heart, an opening of eyes, an opening of doors.

In every word the iron gate swings back and there is the sound of the song of freedom.”Yes, but the path must be prepared for His feet if He is to come and loose our feet from the stocks. The Prophet of God must unhinge the gates of infidelity which hold Christ back from human hearts and human society, that He, in turn, may break the iron doors of prison houses and bring the captives free.

The Prophet must proclaim the “coming in power” of the Christ that He in turn may “proclaim liberty to the captive”; the Prophet of God must release the truth that the Son of God may bind up the broken-hearted, and the Prophet of God must make known a millennium that the Good Tidings may reach the “meek” that they are yet to “inherit the earth”.If John the Baptist were a pathfinder for the Saviour, the true prophet of the twentieth century will be a pathfinder for the Messiah, for the way of Christ is not only to “give Good Tidings to the meek”, “bind up the broken-hearted”, “proclaim liberty to the captive”, and “the opening of the door to them that are bound”, but it is His also “to proclaim the year of Jehovah for ever, and the day of the vengeance of our God”.In John’s day the true Prophet prepared the way for the first appearance of Jesus—the day’s Man— the Redeemer from sin. In this day it is the prophet’s business to prepare the way for the Second Appearance of Jesus, whose coming is to be “without sin unto salvation”.He is to proclaim the Word of God. Again, we may accept John as a sample of God’s sent one. He defended his ministry by an appeal to the sacred text of Isaiah. Only false prophets refuse or fail to find the defense of their ministry in the same inspired Scriptures. The modern ministers, who have yielded to the drift of their times and no longer feel the necessity of bolstering their positions by an appeal to the Bible, were clearly anticipated and described by the great Jeremiah.

Of them Jeremiah said, “They shall deny Jehovah, and say, It is not He; neither shall evil come upon us, neither shall we see sword nor famine; and the prophets shall become wind, and THE WORD is not in them”.Dr. I.

M. Haldeman’s series of questions, then, are not inappropriate as applied to the liberal’s “ideal prophet”: “What do you think of a preacher who stands in the pulpit of a Christian church and in the Name of Christ denies His Virgin Birth? “What do you think of a preacher who by that denial puts a bar-sinister on the name of the mother of Jesus and sends her down the ages as nothing better than a fallen woman? “What do you think of a preacher who by that denial sends Jesus Christ before the gaze of His audience as a fatherless bastard, as an illegitimate son? “What do you think of a preacher who denies the death of Christ as an atoning sacrifice and makes that Cross no better than a common murder or a brutal barbarism? “What do you think of a preacher who denies that Jesus Christ rose from the dead in the body in which He died; a preacher who preaches that Jesus Christ is nothing more than a bodiless ghost, a formless phantom? “What do you think of a preacher who denies that on yonder throne is sitting a glorified, immortal Man, upholding all things by the Word of His power; the God who became Man, the Man who was, and is none other than God? “What do you think of a preacher who laughs at the doctrine of hell and testifies that men are not so much in danger of hell as they are of the theology which proclaims it; preachers who teach that all men are by nature the sons of God and that no son of man can be lost? “What do you think of the preacher who teaches that the great work of the church is saving the world socially and not individually; that the true call of the church is social and not personal redemption? “What do you think of the preacher who stumbles at the miracles of the Bible, but is ready to go on all-fours after spiritualism; who would consider himself childish if he accepted the stories of Genesis, but who is ready to sit the night out in a Mediumistic seance waiting for communications from the unseen world? “What do you think of the preacher who is not certain that the Bible gives clear statements concerning the hereafter, but is ready to shout himself hoarse over the fact that scientists have now actually concluded that man has a soul? “What do you think of a preacher who protests against Bibliolatry, against surrendering completely to the written Word, and yet looks upon every utterance of Herbert Spencer as the very breath of the Almighty? “And yet, these are the kind of men that Jericho colleges are sending us, asking us to ordain them, open our pulpits to them, give our churches to their sway— “Men who spend four or five years in college that they may scientifically demonstrate that the body of Jesus of Nazareth still mingles with the dust of Palestine.” Truly, Amos, the unschooled herdsman, was both a Prophet and a Seer, for looking upon the twentieth century, he said, “Behold, the day cometh, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:11). Throughout the world now there is a great hue and cry about the poor progress that the Church is making, and annual reports of some of the greatest denominations are showing decline in numbers, and men are saying, “What does it mean?” We are inclined to think it means that the Church of Jesus Christ is suffering the affliction of corporate wealth on the one side and a clerical infidelity on the other, and that her judgment is akin to that which in Isaiah’s day was visited upon Judah, of whom he said, “Jehovah will cut off from Israel head and tail. * * The ancient and honourable, he is the head; and the prophet that teacheth lies, he is the tail” (Isaiah 9:14-15).“If any man preach unto you any Gospel other than which you received” (Galatians 1:9), he is a lying prophet —a needless caudal appendage to the church.Incidentally, he reproved the enemies of Christ. It is a significant phrase, describing those who questioned John, “They came from the Pharisees”. The Pharisees were Unitarians everyone; they believed in God the Father; they rejected Christ, the Son. What a liberal writer describes as “the fever of evangelical fervor” could not be combined with their cold creed without producing a case of spiritual ague; and John, the Prophet of God, advised no such endeavor. With Paul, John held that “the believer hath no part with the infidel” save to “reprove”, “rebuke” and “exhort”.It is a time when the Church of Jesus Christ ought to join with D.

Wortman in his petition: “God of the Prophets! Bless the Prophets’ sons; Elijah’s mantle o’er Elisha cast; Each age its solemn task may claim but once; Make each a nobler, stronger than the last! “Anoint them Prophets! Make their ears attent To Thy Divinest speech; their hearts awake To human need; their lips make eloquent To assure the right, and every evil break.” THE MESSAGE It is doubtful if a more comprehensive putting of the Prophet’s message appears on any page of the Bible than this of Joh 1:6-34. The Prophet’s one great message is compassed in three words, “Lord”, “Light” and “Life”.“Christ, the Lord,” is the phrase that refers to His Deity. “Christ, the Lord” is the phrase we commonly employ to describe His essential Deity. Our text justifies it. Of Him it says, “The Word was God”.“No man hath seen God at any time; the Only Begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him” (John 1:18). The people who propose to preach Jehovah, after having put Jesus aside, are opposed by every true Prophet, for the Prophets are one with their Lord in the teaching, “He that hath not the Son, the same hath not the Father. No man cometh unto the Father but by the Son”.If Christ was right in His interpretation of the Old Testament, no Prophet from Moses’ day until Malachi, failed of the message of the Coming One. Of the Old Testament Scriptures He said, “Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they that testify of Me”. Truly they do! You can take a page from any part of the Old Testament, and, by careful study, you will find upon it the face of Christ; and in that face you can see God, for He is the “express image of the Father”. A great preacher has a quotation from Ruskin, “If you will take a square inch out of any one of Turner’s skies, you will find the infinite in it”, and then that preacher remarks, “If man would take any square inch out of God’s Word, he would find the suggestion of the Throne of God and the Lamb.” And if we are God’s Prophets, preaching God’s Truth, we will find the same.Christ the Light. “John came for a witness that he might hear witness of the light”.

Christ was the Light, “even the Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world”. The great Dr. Dale never made a more sage remark than this, “The real truth is that while Christ came to preach the Gospel, His chief objective in coming was that there might be a Gospel to preach.”“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.

And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not,” (John 1:1-5). Sir Edwin Arnold wrote his poem, “The Light of Asia”, and made a vain endeavor to lift Buddha to the level of Jesus. Apparently he repented it, and while he made rather bungling work of the business, he attempted, at least, to give to men the proof of his repentance by writing another poem entitled “The Light of the World”. He could describe but One—even Christ. That was the Light which Prophets saw, and of which they spake, saying, “I will also give Thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be made salvation unto the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6).According to our text, in that Lord and in that Light is Life. Christ, then, is the Life. That is the Prophet’s message.

The true prophet will never depart from the declaration, “There is none other Name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved”. The man who prefers the language of sociology to that of Scripture; who preaches “reformation” rather than “regeneration”, and “evolutionary biology” rather than “revolutionary New Birth”, takes issue with John, the greatest of Prophets, and enters the arena of argument against Paul, who had determined “to know nothing among men save Jesus Christ and Him crucified”, and forgets the great fact that only the Living One can create life, and only the One who is Himself “Light” can enlighten others.With one story, let me conclude.

It is that of a great thinker who is reported to have looked one day upon a large audience of medical students, made up of hundreds of men. He took from his desk a letter, and as he opened it in their presence, he said, “Young gentlemen, I have here a letter from one of your number in which he tells me the story of his life—a record of shame and sinful indulgence that makes me shudder even to look at the letter. At the conclusion of this fearful confession he asks, ‘Can your God save such an one as I am?’” Then, surveying his audience in silence for a full minute, Henry Drummond continued, “When I came to Edinburgh this afternoon, there was a beautiful fleecy cloud spreading itself like a thing of glory in the upper sky, and I said, ‘Oh, cloud, where did you come from?’ And the cloud said, ‘I came from the slums and low places of the city. The sun of heaven reached down and lifted me up and transfigured me with his own shining.’ ” After a solemn pause, he added further, “I do not know whether this young man is here or not, but if he is, I can say to him that my Saviour and my Master, Jesus Christ, can reach down to the lowest depths into which a human soul can sink, and can lift that soul up. Yes, he can lift you up, young man, until He shines in you and through you, and transfigures you with the light of His own love and glory.” Professionally, the speaker was an instructor of science; his message that day proved him to be “a Prophet of God”.