(John 1:24)
�And they which were sent were of the Pharisees.�
Today we look at a very short verse which identifies those who were sent to question John the Baptist. Verse nineteen had already said that these men were sent from the priests and Levites. These men were, themselves, of the sect of the Pharisees.
The Pharisees could be called the fundamentalists of the day. They had a religious outlook that was based on their understanding of the words of the Old Covenant. They were so zealous to not offend the Law in any point that they had added their own traditions on top of the Law so that they would not pass through their traditions and offend in any point.
Their problem was that they were to the point where their worship was more of their doctrine than it was of relationship with God. Hosea had said, �For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings� (Hosea 6:6) The meaning was not that God did not desire that the people offered the sacrifice and burnt offerings which He had demanded in that dispensation. What the verse does mean is that God wanted those rituals and obligations to lead the people to a relationship with Him.
Jesus, chiding this same class of men for their lack of understanding of His message, said, �And [you] say, if we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets.� (Matthew 23:30-31)
Jesus then prophesied that those men would commit the same crimes as had their forefathers. (see Matthew 23:35)
Far too many of the fundamentalist camp, who do hold to the true doctrine of God, have added to that doctrine the need to berate the sinner rather than to beckon him to the Savior.
Let us be wary lest our piety hide the cross behind a cross attitude.
There is a sermon in the above. But, this is not the message I would deliver today. Today is Christmas. Today we honor the fact that God, in the Person of Jesus, came into the world of man so that He could redeem man from the grip of sin and Satan.
What I would like to talk about today is the contrast of purpose between these men who came to question John, and the Savior Who came to die in time so that we might live in eternity.
First, let us consider those who were sent. �And they...�
Look at these Pharisees. Their purpose was power.
They came to John and desired the source of his message. The problem, from their standpoint, was that he was not from their denomination. Worse, John had been born into their group and was now off on his own, preaching without their backing.
The men of this group would seem to have reason to doubt, and to dislike, this �Lone Ranger� of a preacher.
John wasn�t wrong, however. There are situations when we must separate ourselves from our mentors. Hebrews 13:17 gives us some spiritual guidance: �Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you.�
The first part of this chapter, Hebrews 13, had been dealing with temporal situations. This verse talks about spiritual overseers. We have to be in subjection to our earthly brothers in the Lord. This will serve as a brake on our natural tendency to puff ourselves up.
The ministry is a heady experience. We, who have taken it upon ourselves to stand before the congregation of the Lord, are in the position of giving forth the message of God to those who sit before us. It is an easy thing, too easy!, to become prideful of our status. Being in subjection to others is a means which will tend to remind us of our place as ministers of the Lord.
Our ultimate fidelity, however, is to God. There may come a time when we must loose the bonds of that subjection in order to rightly follow God.
�Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.� (II Corinthians 6:14-17)
This, spiritual fidelity toward God overriding that of fidelity toward men, is the purpose of one leaving his spiritual �parents� and going off into the wilderness.
Personal pride, petty partisan squabbles, and personality conflicts are NOT a Biblical reason to disfellowship with a church or church group. A good rule of thumb is that if no one who is spiritually discerned agrees with you, you are in the wrong.
Think on that!
God doesn�t have any �Lone Rangers.� He does have some small scouting parties!
These questioners also desired the secret of John�s message. They wanted to know why the people were willing to follow him out into the desert.
That is a good thing to consider as we look at ministries. Consider just where the throngs are being led. A large crowd is not the indelible mark of God�s pleasure on the ministry of a man. Many people followed Jim Jones into suicide. His was not the ministry of the true man of God.
Many people have followed Joseph Smith into error. Many have gone the way of Mary Baker Eddy. Many have followed the cult of the Jehovah�s Witness program into a Christless eternity. �Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.� (I John 4:1)
The test of a prophet, a ministry, a minister, or a movement? �Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.� (Jude 3)
God is eternal. His truth is eternal as well. Beware when you find someone trying to say that God has just entrusted a new truth to him. First, that is pride speaking. Second, that is to imply that God has changed His mind about His program for earth. To say that this new doctrine is simply a return to the doctrine of the early church, which had been somehow lost, is to imply that man is stronger than God - that God somehow lost control of His church.
Beware of new doctrine. Trust the preserved Word!
These questioners also desired not so much to simply understand, but to have, the strength of the message of John. This was easy enough to come by. All they had to do was to trust the repentance of which John spoke, and to trust the coming Messiah to which John pointed.
There are no short cuts or side roads to God�s pleasure. There is one true God and one true Way to find fellowship with Him. That way leads through Jesus Christ and the Cross of Calvary. (see Acts 4:12)
The Pharisees may have come seeking power, but Jesus� purpose in coming into the world was pardon.
I am told that there was an entire lot full of buses which were ready to take people from the path of hurricane Katrina down in New Orleans. The busses were never released to effect the evacuation so people were at the mercy of the winds and storm. Quite a few died. Many more were devastated in their lives.
Jesus came with the desire to move people from the spiritual danger in which they resided. That is why He came into this world.
There used to be a small town near here. Appleton, Illinois, was a small community which saw many storms during its existence. Then, in 1993, came our great floods. The Mississippi so overflowed her banks that she went to over twenty miles wide at some places. Other smaller rivers and creeks also flooded. Appleton sat near the banks of a small stream. During this flood the stream was not so small. That little creek flooded the entire city. The federal government was so appalled by the devastation that they bought the entire town and moved the residents to higher ground.
Jesus came into a world where the danger to people was ever greater than that of a �One-Hundred-Year-Flood.� He saw people as they were, sinners who were estranged from any opportunity to reunite with God. They were headed to a bleak eternity.
His mission was to do something to help these people. Jesus desired to motivate people to live above their circumstance. Their circumstance was that they were lost in their sins. Romans 3:12 explains their situation. �They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.�
Jesus came into the world to offer mankind a way out of the quagmire of sin which kept us from approaching God. Of the Christian who has accepted Jesus as his Savior, Paul says, �Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.� (Romans 3:24)
The desire of Jesus was that people would be allowed to matriculate into a new life. When we graduate from school we being to live a �real� life in the �real world.� Jesus gives us the opportunity to live above the strife and problem of this physical world. He gives our life a meaning in the spiritual sense.
Through Him we are allowed to live for eternity!
The people who came to question John were in subjection. �...which were sent...�
The questioners of John were simply the emissaries of those who sent them. An ambassador may have certain ideas about how his nation should interact with the nation to which he is assigned. He does not have the authority to implement those ideas. He is simply the �messenger boy� of the government which sent him. His will must be bowed before the will of his superiors. To do otherwise would be to invite the ire of his own government and the ending of his mission.
These questioners were such as ambassadors. They were restricted by the will of those who sent them.
Even with, perhaps because of, this situation, these men were reasoned to disbelieve John. John was not one of their own clan. He was an outsider. He was even an outsider by choice! John had been born into the priestly caste.
What was it that caused him to depart from their threshold and embark upon his desert ministry? The thing which energized John was the Spirit of God. It was the Spirit which gave him his message. It was the Spirit which gave him his commission.
The questioners, being led by their views and doctrine rather than the Spirit of God, would not accept the truth that John called even them into repentance.
They may have felt that they were too pure to need to repent. They may have felt that their doctrinal stance made them immune from the need to repent. They may have felt that their exalted caste made it unnecessary for them to repent.
To assuage their own conscience they were reckoned to downplay the importance of John and his message. They just saw little reason to accept the word of this �wilderness bumpkin� and accept a baptism of repentance which would admit to their own sinfulness. They just couldn�t accept that they were sinners, or wrong - or that they ever could be such!
Jesus, however, came not as an emissary, He came as the Essence of Him Who sent Him into the world.
Jesus relished to do the works of the Father. Jesus said, �...the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do...�
There is a Biblical doctrine called the Kenosis. Philippians 2:6-7 tells us of Christ, �Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:�
The basic teaching of the Kenosis is that Jesus was, and is, God eternal. For a time He emptied Himself of the outward glory of the Godhead to take upon Himself the likeness of men. While He was fully man, He never stopped being fully God. John 3:13 records Jesus saying to Nicodemus, �And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.� Notice, even while on the earth as a man Jesus still carried the Divine trait of omnipresence. He was on earth; even at the same time, He was in Heaven!
Jesus voluntarily submitted to the Father, in His humanity, as a representative of us so that He might purchase our salvation at the Cross of Calvary. I can never explain that. But, the Bible says that this is so. I must accept that which is beyond my reasoning power with the faith that God is never untrue.
Hebrews 1:1-3 says of Jesus:
�God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by the whom also he made the worlds, Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.�
There are a couple things I�d like you to notice about these verses. First, Jesus is called the �express image of his person.� Jesus is not a copy of God. Jesus is the express image of God. That quite simply means that Jesus is God.
Second, Jesus is the One Who upholds �all things by the word of his power.� Since only God could do this, Jesus is God.
Finally, it was Jesus who �by himself purged our sins.� We know the truth of what Jesus did at Calvary. We thus understand that this verse is speaking of Jesus. Jesus is God.
Jesus reflected the picture to mankind of just Who is God. Jesus came as a man into the world of men. He gave us a physical picture of the Spiritual God. We could never have begun to understand the fulness of the Godhead had not Jesus came to show us those truths in a form which we could understand.
Jesus resided within He Who sent Him. Unlike the Pharisees who were sent from the priests to question John. Jesus was One with He Who sent Him.
In John 10:30 Jesus clearly states His claim to absolute deity. �I and my Father are one.� This is not a misreading of the verse. In the thirty-third verse, after Jesus had asked the leaders why they were ready to stone Him, �The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.�
If this were a misunderstanding on their part, Jesus never corrected them. This would be, if Jesus were not God, deceit on His part. Since Jesus lived on this earth without sin, Jesus is God!
Look and see that the questioners were those who were sure of their doctrine. �...were of the Pharisees.�
As I said before, the Pharisees were the fundamentalists of the day. Their doctrine had been worked out. It was an historic doctrine. It was founded upon the Scripture. But, they had packed so many of their own rules upon the top of that Scripture that the Scripture was hard to find underneath their teachings.
The purpose of all their teaching, which were added to Scriptural teaching, was so that they would not fault the Law. In essence, they were trying to protect God.
Silly thought, isn�t it!
Besides, adding to the Scripture is also a sin. It is an attempt to restate that which God has already perfectly stated. That, in essence, is a mistrust of the goodness of God.
The delight of these Pharisees seemed to be to find fault in others. This was a simple matter of pride. �We know more Scripture than you!� Wasn�t this one of the sins of the Gnostics!
This is also the sin of pride. If we berate others as inferior to us in a spiritual sense, we are effectively saying that we are better than them. Such ought not to be! We are sinners. We are imperfect human beings. The only goodness we have is that we have acknowledged our place as sinners and have accepted Jesus Christ as Savior!
This deviance separated them from the God which they claimed to worship. As proof of this is that they were the moving force which condemned the Son of God to the death of the Cross of Rome.
The purpose of Jesus in coming into the world was to seek a decision for men to accept their Lord.
Luke 19:10 tells us that Jesus came into this world to seek sinners. He did this through His life. He did this through His teaching. And, most importantly, He did this through His sacrificial death on the Cross.
Jesus Christ came into earth, as a man, so that He could die in time that we might live in eternity.
Jesus came into the earth to redeem the lost from their sin. That is the reason that He searched them out. He didn�t come to play �tag.� He didn�t come to look down His nose at their sin and degradation. He didn�t even come to teach them a better way to live.
He came to BE the way for them to live eternally. He came for a purpose. His purpose was the eternal salvation of lost souls!
Jesus sacrificed Himself on the Cross of Calvary to restore to the lost that fellowship with God which had been gone since the sin of Adam in the Garden of Eden.
Had we been �good,� or able to do this ourselves, He would not have had to come. Truth is: we can�t approach God on our own. We need to the redeeming act of Jesus as Calvary.
What about you? Have you accepted Jesus as your Savior? Just now, ask Him to take your sin and make you a new creature. Trust the work He already did. He did it for you!