John the Baptist. Church members know this man or maybe I should say know of him. But what of his contemporaries? Didn’t he arrive in a most remarkable manner? Yep, but three decades and a desert later he seemed like another Jewish hope-buster.
“Our hopes must have gotten too high,” whispered the disappointed who had years before asked, “What is this child going to be?” It is no stretch to think such thoughts about those who saw the elderly, barren, Elizabeth deliver God’s miracle child, loose the tongue of an oddly deaf-mute Zechariah, and ring the child with that odd, unfamilial moniker: John. Is it not likely that by this 15th year of Tiberius Caesar John was not only a locust-eating, camel-cloth wearing oddity, but also an orphan?
So with parents likely gone, his reputation was weird, and his odd-arrival probably long discarded if not forgotten out of those ancient Israeli minds. But, that which God starts he never forgets. Right?
1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar…2… the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. (Luke 3:1-2–ESV)
When Christmas comes we find two births, not just the centerstage one of Jesus. Coupled even at that juncture is the fore-birth of John. While it is natural that we leapfrog their toddler and childhood, their adolescence and coming of age would it have been natural for them? By no means. Life still went on and for some life went away. But not God.
Paul1 penned a phrase for the millennia: “when the fullness of time had come.” When the time was right God sent his son, that is what Galatians is about. We may also say, “When the time was right God sent John. See the word of God came to John where John was. That means that the Holy Spirit launched John into a preaching ministry.
Do you know what God also did? He started the people on their treks to the desert. God told a preaching-Noah to build an ark and then when the time was right the animals were sent. God told John, “tell the people to turn from their sins.” God sent the people to hear.
This event at the time of Christ became a national one. It was a revival of tremendous import and a prelude to the most important ministry of all time. God starts revivals when and where he decides to. We cannot rush them; revivals are not our business, but God’s. Our business is to get on the boat of repentance. God made the boat we need to live like we are on it.
Leave a Reply