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41. Introducing John the Baptist


Malachi 3:1 & 4:1-6; Luke 1:5-17
Key Verse: "See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes.  He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.  Malachi 4:5-6

Malachi is the last book of the Old Testament.  It is believed to have been written about 400 years before Jesus’ birth.  There are other writings after Malachi, such as Maccabees, about struggles that the people of Israel had with their other foreign oppressors, but these books are held to be more apocryphal in nature.  This means that scholars, including Hebrew scholars, do not give these books the weight or respect of the actual canonical scriptures.  Apocryphal books are regarded more as the adventures of man.  Some of them also contain events that may not have really happened, but are more imaginary in their telling.  Scripture is considered as the actual Word of God. 

Malachi is full of rebuke, once again for how God's people, especially the priests, have failed to walk in His ways. It is a repetition of all that the Lord said before the exile because the people are back to doing many of the same things that got them into trouble in the first place.  It is another promise from God that a judgment day will come.  For some, it will be a time of joy and vindication.  For others, those who refuse to submit to God's standard for life, it will be a different matter altogether.

It has been over 1,500 years since God first promised Messiah to Abram and even longer ago, God made a promise to satan (I refuse to honor that name with a capital letter.).  By human standards, God was slow, but in God's way, as we've already pointed out, His timing is perfect.  Christ came when His message would accomplish the most.  That may be hard for us to understand.  It would have made more sense if Jesus had come in our time, the time of Twitter and global media, but God the Father chose this time, for His reasons and purposes.

John came to prepare the way for Messiah's coming.  That also seems odd to our way of thinking.  Why would Messiah need someone to prepare the way?  We will think more about this again tomorrow.  Yet, in Malachi, God promised a forerunner to prepare the way for Messiah's coming.  John is that promised sign fulfilled.  As we shall see, he will blaze a path, just as Malachi described. 

When John's birth was proclaimed to his father Zechariah, in the temple, the angel said of him, "He will be great in the sight of the Lord.  He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth.  Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the Lord their God.  He will go on before the Lord, in the Spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous to make ready a people prepared for the Lord." (Luke 1:15-17) Four hundred years before, God spoke and now, what God had promised, once again is seen by all. 

The four hundred years of time between the writing of Malachi and the coming of John the Baptist is exactly the same amount of time that the children of Israel waited to be delivered from bondage in Egypt.  There is a strong parallel set up, in which God intends for the people of Israel to see the connections between Moses and Jesus, the two greatest leaders ever known.  Both will deliver from bondage.  Both will be great prophets.  Both will provide tremendously important teachings and revelations from God that will shape the rest of history.  Both will lead the people into new vistas of hope and glory, fulfilling God’s ancient promises.  But we must not miss that Moses is only a picture or prototype of the great Savior we have in Jesus.  Moses delivered from slavery. Jesus delivers from death.  Moses revealed God. Jesus IS God.  Moses described the way that sin is covered by the blood of the lamb.  Jesus is the Messiah, the True Lamb of God whose Blood was shed for the sins of the whole world!

 Hymn: "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" 

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