John The Greatest Series

It takes all kinds to make a world is an old cliché, and like many

old clichés there is a lot of truth to it. God so made our physical

world that it just won't work without differences. Issac Asimov

points out that energy can only be turned into work when you find it

in greater concentration in one place, and in lesser concentration in

another. If the world was flat and the sun shone on all of it at the

same time, all parts of the earth would be at the same temperature,

and you could get no work out of it. But if it is round, and so one side

is dark when the other is light, and it is the reality of these opposites

that makes the sun so powerful a source of energy for work.

God follows the same laws in the building of His kingdom on earth.

He does not want everybody to be the same. In fact, He wants people

who are opposites: Not just in sex, but in personality, life-style, and

in there gifts and goals. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the

contrast we see between Jesus and His forerunner John The Baptist.

They were as unlike each other as a wedding and a funeral, or joy and

solemnity. Do not reject or look down on Christians who are

different. The world is full of Christians who are strange to us, but

they are just what God wants. We are all strange to someone else,

but God loves the variety.

The paradox is Jesus and John were so much alike in their

preaching of the kingdom that they were mistaken for each other.

People thought John may be the Messiah, and he had to deny it.

Jesus was taken to be John the Baptist because He was so powerful.

People thought he was John come back to life. In Matt. 14:1-2 we

read, "At that time Herod the Tetrarch heard about the fame of

Jesus; and he said to his servants, this is John the Baptist, he has been

raised from the dead, that is why these powers are at work in him."

Later on Jesus asked His disciples, "Who do men say that the Son Of

Man is?" And in Matt. 16:14 we read this response, "And they said,

some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or

one of the prophets."

This gives us an insight into the powerful impact John the Baptist

had on Israel in the few short years of his ministry. All the other

prophets people thought of were Old Testament prophets. John was

the only contemporary that was put in that class of people whom

Jesus might have been, for He was the only man of God like him who

had been seen in Israel for centuries. They could easily imagine that

he was the Messiah. So John was taken for Jesus, and Jesus for John,

because they were both such powerful personalities for God. But they

were still very much opposites in their personal lives.

John was a hermit who spent a good share of his life in the desert

living the life of an ascetic. This is the point of Mark 1:6 where his

dress and his diet are described. There is not much point in details

like this being preserved unless they have some significance. What do

we care what John wore and ate? Unless there is something valuable

to learn by the contrast with the life-style of the Master, whose way

he was preparing, there would be no point in it. His camel hair

clothing was the clothing of a wilderness nomad, and his diet of locust

and wild honey were the products of the wilderness. If we saw John

today, we would no doubt point him to a mission, for he would give us

the impression that he was not exactly living high off the hog. He was

an uncut diamond, rough and unpolished.

Jesus said, "Why did you go out into the wilderness, to see a man

clothed in soft raiment?" Jesus went on the say you would go to

king's houses if all you were interested in was soft and expensive

clothing. No, he said, you went out to see a prophet, and more than

prophet. He is the one who was to prepare the way for Messiah. And

then Jesus makes this amazing statement: The greatest compliment

he ever paid to anyone in Matt. 11:11, "Truly, I say to you, among

those born of women there has risen no one greater than John the

Baptist."

Who was the greatest man in history? It all depends on who you

ask. But if you had asked Jesus that question in His day on earth, He

would say it was this strange forerunner of his, John the Baptist. Any