Well, you know, it may seem like it is hard to follow up the children’s ministry, but actually it is easier. An awareness of how precious the Lord is is fresh on all of our minds. Sometimes you come up to speak somewhere and you are starting from minus zero. Somehow the songs did not seem to hit the pace, and people seem pretty dead when you get started. Hopefully, along the way, things liven up.
But when you have precious children singing, and there is a whisper in the glory and a tear in every eye, it is a lot easier to get started from there.
Well, I have enjoyed being here again. I am glad the high school can be in here tonight, and that everybody has a copy of this book on prayer now. That is very good.
Tonight, we want to look at John the Baptist as a picture of a link to the coming of the Lord. We want to turn to Malachi and see the prediction concerning his preparation and coming. Let us turn to Malachi 3, right at the end of the Old Covenant.
This prophet was prophesying before a time of discipline, a time of silence. Of course, the Lord was still with His people through hundreds of years, but there was no kingdom prophecy going forth—rather, just a kind of existence.
Malachi says in Malachi 3:1:
Behold, I send My messenger,
and he will prepare the way before Me.
And the Lord, whom ye seek, will suddenly come to His temple;
even the messenger of the covenant, in whom ye delight:
behold, He cometh, saith the Lord of hosts.But who may abide the day of His coming?
And who shall stand when He appeareth?
For He is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap:
and He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver;
and He will purify the sons of Levi, and refine them as gold and silver,
that they may offer unto the Lord offerings in righteousness.
Then, as the dialogue continues, we come to Malachi 3:16. Here we see a sort of corporate gathering of hidden ones in the days of Malachi:
Then they that feared the Lord spake one with another;
and the Lord hearkened, and heard,
and a book of remembrance was written before Him,
for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon His name.And they shall be Mine, saith the Lord of hosts,
even Mine own possession, in the day that I make;
and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.Then shall ye return and discern between the righteous and the wicked,
between him that serveth God and him that serveth Him not.
Then Malachi 4:1-6:
For, behold, the day cometh, it burneth as a furnace;
and all the proud, and all that work wickedness, shall be stubble;
and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts,
that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.But unto you that fear My name shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in its wings;
and ye shall go forth, and gambol as calves of the stall.And ye shall tread down the wicked;
for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet
in the day that I make, saith the Lord of hosts.Remember ye the law of Moses My servant,
which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel,
even statutes and ordinances.Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet
before the great and terrible day of the Lord come.
And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children,
and the heart of the children to their fathers;
lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.
Now let us turn to Luke 3, where we see John the Baptist coming into his time of public ministry, declaring the way of the Lord. Luke 3, beginning at verse 1:
Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar,
Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea,
and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee,
and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis,
and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene,
in the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas,
the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness.And he came into all the region about the Jordan,
preaching the baptism of repentance unto remission of sins;
as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet,The voice of one crying in the wilderness,
Make ye ready the way of the Lord,
make His paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be brought low;
and the crooked shall become straight,
and the rough ways smooth;
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.
Then he said to the multitudes that came out to be baptized by him:
Ye offspring of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance,
and begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father:
for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.
And even now the axe also lieth at the root of the trees:
every tree therefore that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down,
and cast into the fire.
Then, just Luke 3:15: “Now as the people were in expectation…” That is good enough.
Our Father, we come to You. We have had this theme before us all week long. We have had the promise, the word of promise of Your soon coming. You have said it in Your Word; we believe it. We ask that You would make this Word alive in our hearts as we come to the end of this age.
But, Lord, we want to know how to live in the end, how to be pleasing unto You as servants unto You. We thank You for the messengers who have come this week, for the children who have sung, and for those who have taken part in burden and prayer for this whole time.
Indeed, Lord, we do pray about that link. We do not know from what generation the link will be found—how many, how few, who they are. But we do believe that there will be those who will be so attractive to the Bridegroom that He can wait no longer, and the heavens will open, and He will return.
In any case, Lord, as we have been together in these days, we ask You now one more time for a refreshing, a rekindling of the Holy Spirit within us, a new strength, a new awareness, and a deeper insight into Your precious Word. Thank You, Lord, for this time together, as we commit it into Your hands. In Jesus’ precious name, amen.
The King is coming soon for His kingdom. The gospel is being broadcast all over the earth. There are signs that we can see around us, and even in Israel the fig tree is getting ripe. Things are winding up—or winding down; I do not know which way you put it.
But there is a final moment when there is a link—not an event, but a people prepared and ready for the Lord’s coming. At that moment, we will see the age of grace turn into the kingdom age.
We have, as an illustration, John the Baptist, who was a link between the age of the law and the age of grace. He bridges, as it were, the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. The last word spoken in the Old Covenant was of his coming; then you open up, especially the Gospel of Mark, and there is John again at the beginning of a new transition, a new age. John is indeed a link.
If you look in Luke 1:80, we see that “the child,” this is John, “grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his showing unto Israel.” There came a day in John’s life, after thirty years, basically as a hidden one, when he came out, spoke up, and shattered the silence with the Word of God. The ground began to shake, as it were, as he began to manifest himself.
We see prophesied in Luke 1:17 that John would go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah:
And he shall go before His face in the spirit and power of Elijah,
to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children,
and the disobedient to walk in the wisdom of the just;
to make ready for the Lord a people prepared for Him.
John is likened to Elijah. You remember what Elijah was like. He was some kind of a stern character. He stood up to Ahab—well, he could not quite stand up to Jezebel. Then he stood up to the people of God and said, “Choose today whom you will serve,” and showed by a great sign that the Lord was the living God. The people bowed down.
Elijah looked fierce; he wore fierce clothes. John the Baptist came out of the wilderness wearing fierce clothes. They were fearsome. He had eyes, I am sure, that penetrated. They looked down into your soul. You just looked into John’s eyes, and you were ready to repent, because he could see down into your soul.
When somebody came down to the waters and tried to snooker their way in, he would say, “Hey, you viper. You are not ready for this. You produce fruits that show you are serious, and then I will think about this.” There was no getting past that sternness of character. He was indeed in the spirit and power of Elijah. He thundered.
Later, Jesus speaks of John in Matthew 11. John was now in prison, and some messengers had come from him. After the messengers departed, Jesus began to say to the multitudes concerning John:
What went ye out into the wilderness to behold? A reed shaken with the wind?
But what went ye out to see? A man clothed in soft raiment?
Behold, they that wear soft raiment are in kings’ houses.
But wherefore went ye out? To see a prophet?
Yea, I say unto you, and much more than a prophet.
This is he, of whom it is written,
Behold, I send My messenger before Thy face,
who shall prepare Thy way before Thee.
Jesus describes this man. Again, we have to understand the context here. People came out from Jerusalem, the religious capital of the Jews. To travel down into the wilderness where John was baptizing was quite a journey. This was no picnic. You did not take your car and go down there for the afternoon.
So what did you go down there to see? Some reed blowing in the wind? Some changeable, soft rhetorician who could take either side of an argument or change from one day to the next? No. When you went down, you saw somebody straight as an arrow.
Did you go to see somebody in soft raiment? Did you go to one of those big royal shows—the changing of the guards and all that? Is that what you spent two days going down into the rough wilderness to see? No, no, no. You went down there because, when you met John, you met God.
Tremendous ministry he had. But, as we know, he had a hidden life. For thirty years, only a few people knew about his existence.
Last time, before the high school was here, we spoke from Luke 1 and 2. We looked at some of the people in John’s life that he grew up with: Zacharias, Elizabeth, Anna, Simeon, Mary, and those hidden people in the Judean hills who were waiting for the consolation of Israel—righteous, pious, and especially simple people.
God visited these people in a wonderful way and prepared their hearts. This was, as it were, the womb in which John was raised up.
We need to learn this lesson: even today, although there are big cities like New York and such places, the Lord’s eyes run to and fro across the earth, looking to show Himself strong to those who have a devoted heart, who are pure and loyal to the Lord.
The Lord is aware of these hidden ones all over this world. We do not know most of them, but they are faithful. They are pious, simple, and righteous. They are waiting for the coming of the Lord. One day, these hidden ones who fear the Lord and speak with one another, whose names are written down in that book of remembrance—one day, they will shine.
The sun of righteousness will bring healing and exalt those who have been faithful and hidden all their lives. So, I believe what we tried to share last time was this: the vessel the Lord is looking for, in order to come back, is a bride who is prepared, who in her heart is full of devotion and love—not necessarily a big shot, but simply devoted to Jesus.
Before we leave this subject and talk about John himself, who is the public side of this servant that the Lord is looking for, I want to speak just a moment to the young people who are here—especially those of you who may fellowship in one of those assemblies of the hidden ones.
Today there is, in Christian things, a whole new phenomenon: these sort of Christian mega-theme parks especially tailored for young people. By that I mean these kinds of works, churches, and large groups. They have fancy, cool names. They have a cool band. They have lighting. They even have football stars, celebrities who speak, intellectuals, profound thinkers, exciting times, multimedia flashing in the background. Look at our multimedia here.
It is very enticing to young people. I was recently in San Diego. My wife and I were staying right near an actual place like Coney Island—you know, it had a Ferris wheel and rides. As I met some of the saints and talked to them, especially about the young people, they said San Diego is the place to go if you are a Christian young person and want to be a cool Christian young person. It is happening.
You go there and you have your choice. There are forty-two flavors—whatever you want. Do you want the Source, the Rock, the Meaning, the Hill, or the Reality? I mean, they have names. You have your own choice, your own particular bent. You can go to large groups or small groups. They have something every night. This is like free rides.
Now, I know this is very tempting, and I know that a lot of young people see that and then see their little hidden assembly and begin to despise the small things they have. Well, I am not against young people going for a nice blowout of worship and getting together with other young people, throwing their arms up in the air for a few hours and saying how much they love Jesus.
But you can be involved in something like that for five years and never touch the cross in your life. You may never learn the lessons of loving older people or younger people. The church is not age-specific. It is a family, and we have to learn the lessons of loving the family.
Do you know who Tabitha is? You know Tabitha, that little sister in Joppa. You know where Joppa is—on the coast of Israel. Tabitha was in a little fellowship in Joppa. I do not know if it was at Simon the tanner’s house, but if it was at the tanner’s house, it was a pretty stinky fellowship.
Probably it was a pretty small group that met in Joppa at that time. Tabitha, I am sure, was tempted, like all young people, to take the bus up to Jerusalem, where there was Peter, James, and John, and a whole assembly out on Solomon’s porch—thousands of people meeting house to house. Things happened in Jerusalem. What was happening in Joppa?
There were no billboards up. There was no rock band in Joppa. But Tabitha made shawls for the old ladies and did various good works among her little family. Boy, I tell you what, they missed her when she suddenly died.
But she experienced resurrection life, because Peter brought her back to life—or the Lord did. She also got to meet Peter firsthand and shake his hand. Well, Peter lifted her up.
She also happened to be the connection that led Peter there, got him involved with Cornelius, and opened the door for the Gentiles to hear the gospel. Here is Tabitha: she minded her own business there in Joppa, and God blessed her.
All I am saying is, if your young people’s group is you, you are it—the young people. There is not even a pool. If that is where the Lord has you, the Lord will show you great and glorious things if you will be faithful to Him.
I reckon that if there is a John the Baptist—some person in this last day who will be able to stand up and be counted—that person may just come from some hidden assembly. So do not give up on the saints: those older ones around you, and the younger ones.
Do not get prejudiced about worship, as though it has to be with a guitar, a beat, and something flashy. We sang some awfully good hymn songs tonight. They should be part of your repertoire as well.
Do not get impatient when that brother just gives you daily manna on Sunday. He has worked fifty hours, and instead of just watching television and drinking a beer, he studied the Word, prepared a message, and shared it. It is bread and butter. It is your manna. Do not despise that because somebody has a flashy message somewhere else.
You need daily manna. I mean, ice cream is good once in a while, but I have had ice cream about every night over here in the cafeteria. I cannot wait to get out of here. I just cannot take any more ice cream.
Just a word to you, dear ones who live among the hidden ones: God knows your name. He has you written down in the book of remembrance if you are being faithful.
With that in mind, let us go on and look at John a little bit. John was raised up for public testimony. What a tremendous testimony he had. But he was raised up in the secret place.
In Luke 1:15, we see that John was a Nazarite, set apart by a vow. His parents kept him from wine and the razor, and kept him separate and holy. That is part of the training of a vessel: a Nazarite, separated unto God.
Of course, John was from a priestly family. His heritage was actually as a priest. He could have gone into the priesthood and done the apprenticing and all that was involved. We can only imagine that his father, as long as he lived after John was born, took him up to Jerusalem.
Little John may have had a special place over in the corner while his dad was doing various service—taking different bowls and things around, whatever his particular service at that time was. John got to see the beauty of the temple. He heard the beauty of the worship. He saw the wonder of the feasts. It must have been wonderful.
But I think the thing that stayed most in John’s young mind, as he followed his priestly father around, was probably the sacrifice of the Passover lamb.
Something struck John in an unusual way. According to Josephus, in the times of Jesus, when it came to Passover and the slaughtering of those Passover lambs in Jerusalem, Josephus counted 256,500 lambs.
When it came time to sacrifice all these lambs for the Passover feast—for all those more than two million who would flood Jerusalem during that season—all the priests were called on duty. There was no priest on vacation during that time. All the priests were in, all of them had on their smocks, and all of them were involved in this tremendous offering.
If you are a little child, that has to be a pretty impressive thing, do you not think? It is no wonder that John saw the Lamb of God in Jesus, and that it became his focal point later on.
I cannot imagine otherwise. Maybe not Zacharias, learning that he needed to be a quiet man, but certainly Elizabeth must have told John, when he was a young man, about the prophecies involved and the miracle of his birth—his destiny as this forerunner, this voice in the wilderness.
They must have told him about all that when he was a kid: “A voice of one crying in the wilderness—that is you, John. So stop crying and eat your food.” I am sure he heard the stories.
But importantly, when his parents died—we do not know when or how old he was, but I imagine maybe John was a young teenager—John decided to go into the wilderness. He stayed there until he was thirty years old.
It says that in Luke 1:80: he stayed in the wilderness. He tried to find a home in the wilderness. Perhaps it was part of that destiny: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness.” He went to the wilderness to find out what was going on there.
This is a good lesson for us to learn, and a good point for those who would be servants of the kingdom: servants of the kingdom are prepared in the wilderness.
A servant of God who speaks God’s message has to have a spiritual gymnasium—a time where God can deal with him. We noticed in Luke 1:15 that from John’s birth, he was filled with the Spirit. That is a tremendous advantage, and being filled with the Spirit is wonderful.
But he had to be strengthened in spirit, in his spirit, by what he went through in those days in the wilderness. Our Lord Jesus, when the Holy Spirit came down upon Him, received the Spirit; but after He went into the wilderness and came back out, He came out in the power of the Holy Spirit.
There are spiritual transactions that are necessary, represented perhaps by this matter of going into the wilderness. How do you become, as it is predicted of John in Luke 1:17, strong in spirit and able to go in the spirit and power of Elijah?
I cannot imagine that John was anything other than a strong-souled person when he went into the wilderness. First of all, if you are a kid—let us say you are fifteen—not many kids say, “I am going to go to the wilderness and live on my own.” He was a strong young man.
But a strong soul does no good if you are going to speak and be God’s voice. Something has to happen in your life. Otherwise, you are no good as a messenger of the Lord if it is just your reactions out of your soul.
John had to learn how to be moved by the leading of the Spirit and not just by the response of his soul. Brothers and those who share the Word of God, you will find that you come to this place where you realize that the Lord says, “Do not just preach on Sunday based on something you saw Thursday.”
You just have a reaction. You saw folks bickering, so you are going to speak on “speak not evil one of another,” or some such thing. What does the Lord want you to say? “Well, I will tell You what my soul wants to say.” Well, fine—but what does the Lord want you to say?
Learning that lesson, learning to hear the Lord, and learning to live in response to your spirit rather than merely out of the reaction of your soul, is vital if you are going to be a voice for the Lord. These things must be learned in the wilderness.
You can imagine that in the wilderness John was already learning the lesson, “I must decrease.” Now where is our wilderness? Does the Lord send you out into some kind of patch?
Some people are pretty strong. Lance tells the story that the Lord had to send him out to Egypt. He went out into the wilderness so the Lord could teach him lessons. But how about your wilderness? Should you go live out in Egypt somewhere? No. A lot of times, the wilderness is the church.
An inhospitable place. Full of danger. Wild animals.
More specifically, the wilderness pretty much defines everything your soul does not like: loneliness, fears, and all those kinds of things that we spend a lot of time trying to avoid.
It is almost a fact of life that young people cannot stand silence. They will go to bed with their iPod. They will turn the computer on before they go to the bathroom in the morning. God forbid there should be silence, or no television on in the living room—unheard of.
Ah, but you get out in the wilderness. What happens there? You have to imagine what happened to John. First of all, he had perhaps fifteen years there. So there was a lot of waiting—waiting for the Lord, praying.
Hopefully, he had some scrolls, perhaps from his father. He had the Torah, maybe Isaiah, some scrolls with him. He read, he prayed, and he waited. Silence.
Only by being yoked with the Lord, sometimes in a time like that, do we find rest for our souls. The Lord can speak to us if we ever rest. When we are all agitated, it is awfully hard sometimes for the Lord to get through and share what He wants.
So John waited and waited. I do not know whether this is an indication, but we have the stories from Samuel’s life, some of which our brothers shared with us. We know one thing about Samuel: he was about as stubborn as John the Baptist.
Samuel argued with God: “No, no, no, that is not the right one. It is this guy over here.” The Lord told him to do things that he actually disagreed with, but he did them.
In the wilderness with God, I do not know—maybe you are a very holy person—but if you do not do some wrestling and some arguing with God, and if you do not have some issues, I do not think you know what the wilderness is.
Of course, the speakers who come here and speak at the conference are completely different. We live in an ideal world, in the bliss of silence with no problems around. The Lord just speaks to us and sends angels down.
Well, you know better than that. If you want to be a servant of God, you have a good wrestling match on your hands, and it is in your soul. God deals with you. He wrestles with you and talks to you. You disagree with Him, get upset about it, go back, rethink it, and then do it—in the wilderness.
The wilderness may be that small little church or fellowship you are in. It is where you get dealt with. It is the cross on your life. It is those things that touch your flesh, wherever it hits at.
We do not know where John’s weakness was. It could be that loneliness was a big issue that had to be faced and conquered. It could be fear. It could be insecurity. It is not as though everybody simply believes in the Lord as Provider. Sometimes you have to go through hunger and thirst before you discover that the Lord provides.
For some people, it is awfully hard to be content. But somewhere John learned how to be content with camel’s hair, a very simple diet, and a stone for a pillow.
God’s servants sometimes get put in strange places. If your idea of serving God is traveling around amidst the Marriott Marquis, you might find that the Lord says, “You know, I do not think you need all of that.”
How can we serve the Lord if we are laden down with all these soulish issues? So many of God’s servants have so many issues that the Lord just cannot say, “Go.” You say, “Well, I cannot go. What if I break out in warts? What will happen?”
Sometimes you have to go, and it is a scary business. One time, I went to Korea. I remember this time because there was this little Korean pastor who was full of faith, and we were traveling around and preaching the gospel together. I was preaching and he was interpreting—or maybe he was preaching; I could not tell.
After one session, he said, “Now we want to go to this woman’s house. I just got a note, and she has typhoid fever. She has been in her house and quarantined and everything, but we want to go share the gospel with her.”
I said, “Oh boy. All right, do I have typhoid fever shots?” Of course, I did not. So I said, “Well, are you sure we should go?” He said, “Listen, when we go with the gospel, you do not have to worry. You do not have to worry about the devil making you sick. He needs to worry about us and what we are going to do when we get in there.”
Well, I said, “Okay, you first.” But I was willing to go with this guy. I mean, he was so brave for such a short guy.
We went into this house. There was darkness in the house and a terrible odor. We just said, “In Jesus’ name, we lift this thing off this place.” The place lit up. We preached the gospel to this lady, the guy prayed with her, and she got saved.
We left the house, and I saw the guy three days later. I had to ask him, “What is the story?” He said, “Oh, she is healed. She came down to church. She wants to be baptized.”
You have to learn that lesson by experience. If you are afraid of every possible disease or anything that may befall you, there are a lot of issues there. Can the Lord tell you, “Go”?
There is a wilderness, is there not? You want to be a servant of God? Welcome to the wilderness.
What we learn is that it is not our way; it is the Lord’s way. That is why we spend a lot of time waiting, but that is not the main reason. The main reason is that we have got to find our voice.
John was a voice in the wilderness. All right, now he is in the wilderness—but where is the voice? He needed to learn to hear the Lord. This is something that takes a while. We hear wrongly sometimes. We have impressions of things; sometimes they are right, sometimes they are not. We have to wait for that voice.
This is a principle: when the Lord deals with your soul and your flesh, then you are able to see into the souls of other people. We can see from John’s ministry that he could look right into a person’s soul. He could see a sinner coming. He could see a brood of vipers. He could see Jesus.
Have you been dealt with in such a way that you can look and see what is in that person’s life? All right, you see it—now what do you do? John had to wait. What do you say? How do you bring a person to repentance? Do you offend them? Do you just speak up? What is the voice? How do you do that?
John had to learn his voice. He respected his father in the priesthood and everything, but it turned out that the priestly voice was not his voice. He never went in and took the apprenticeship toward that kind of thing.
Some people think that John went into the wilderness and that it really means he went into the Essene community. You know about that community of people who separated themselves and lived out by the Dead Sea. They found the scrolls—the Essene community that baptized themselves almost daily and spoke about holiness and many other things.
Some people speculate that John went into that community as he was growing up and spent some time in the wilderness with them. Whether he did or not, there is no evidence one way or the other. But I know one thing: he discovered that was not his voice.
His life was not to be isolated from people. He was to be a voice to speak to people. He knew isolation was not for him, and neither was being an Essene his voice.
If you turn to John 1, John gives us a sort of eyewitness view of this, since he was a disciple of John the Baptist. In John 1:19, we read:
And this is the witness of John,
when the Jews sent unto him from Jerusalem priests and Levites to ask him, Who art thou?
And he confessed, and denied not; and he confessed, I am not the Christ.
And they asked him, What then? Art thou Elijah? And he saith, I am not.
Art thou the prophet? And he answered, No.
Maybe some of those priests knew him from his childhood days. Then he goes on and says that he is the voice crying in the wilderness.
By the time of Jesus, there were so many false Christs around, so many so-called Elijahs. A guy would come into town—they probably had a little store where you could buy a camel’s-hair suit—and claim to be Elijah. There were false prophets all over the place, or men claiming to be the prophet, the one Moses predicted would come after him.
Some would be a Jeremiah, and Lance knows they are still in the city of Jerusalem. There are Elijahs in Jerusalem right now who claim to be Elijah. Some claim to be the two witnesses. How many pairs of witnesses do we have now, in the truth?
Anyway, there is a city full of pretenders. Was John going to be a pretender? “Who are you—Elijah?” “Yeah, yeah, that is me.” No, no, no. He was not interested in position. Oh, what a temptation.
People say, “What are you? Are you an apostle?” “Yeah, that is me.” No, no, no. “I am not Elijah. I am not the Messiah. I am not the prophet.” “Who are you?” “I have come with a burden. I am a voice crying in the wilderness.”
There, you see, he was learning who he was.
Now, the wonderful thing is, when we turn to Luke 3, we see something really wonderful. He found his voice.
It is so important that Luke actually marks and dates it redundantly in Luke 3:1-2: the fifteenth year of Tiberius, Pontius Pilate here, Herod there, Philip there, Trachonitis, Lysanias, Annas, and Caiaphas. Then he gets to verse 2. Here is the important part: the Word of God came to John in the wilderness.
Ah, now I know. I have got the Word. I have got the burden. I have got the promise. From that time on, he became the voice. He spoke.
Everyone who is a servant of the Lord finds a unique voice. I do not know whether you have noticed, but down through the centuries, when you look in church history, men who were epoch-changing links to recovery and awakenings were quite unique individuals.
They were very human. The gospel writers make sure we understand that John the Baptist was a very human guy. But he was a very human man under a very divine burden.
When he spoke with his human voice, the throne in heaven ratified everything he said. He spoke; God confirmed. He said, “Repent,” and God brought conviction into people’s lives. That is anointing.
He spoke; God ratified. There is a wonderful verse in the story of Samuel, near the end of 1 Samuel 3, where Samuel began to see God and began to speak and prophesy. It says that God let none of his words fall to the ground.
Little Samuel spoke, and God stood with him. Samuel spoke; God stood with him. What he said, God ratified.
John came out of the wilderness with a voice, and God stood with him. When John spoke, it shook the silence of Israel. It shook people awake. Suddenly they were hearing nothing other than God Himself.
When he said, “Repent,” they repented, and the multitudes came out. What was it really? What is the essence of John’s message? You say, “Well, it was baptism,” or, “It was repentance.” True, true. It was speaking of One who was to come. True. But what was it that made him the voice in the wilderness?
“Prepare the way of the Lord.” What was it? When you get down to it, when John the Baptist shared, he cleared off all the clutter that had accumulated around what it means to be the kingdom of God.
Herod was in the kingdom of Israel, but was it a kingdom of Israel? It was actually a province of Rome. Who was the king on the throne anyway but a pretender and a corrupt king, not an anointed king? This was not even really a kingdom.
All the rituals, teachings, and traditions had obscured a basic foundational reality. When John came and spoke, he said, “God is your King, and you are not ready. He is sending His Messiah, and you need to repent.”
The people were shocked out of sleep, awoke, jumped into that water, and waited for a real kingdom. What a tremendous impact this man had in approximately one year of ministry before he was killed—just one year.
He burned like a bright light. Jesus said he was a burning lamp, speaking the truth and bringing the kingdom tangibly before them. In Luke 3:15, when he spoke, there was an expectation of the kingdom. Suddenly, it all cleared out.
What was his ministry after all? He was a preparer of the way. He brushed off the doorway. As it says in Malachi, he would come and prepare the way, and then the Lord would come into His temple and purify the sons of Levi. But somebody had to open the door and brush off the foundation.
We see this fulfilled in Jesus’ ministry. After John brought this message of His coming, Jesus came, went into the temple, and cleansed the temple.
This ministry of Elijah and John the Baptist, I think, has something to do with Israel in the end. But using this as an illustration, we see that he was one who was cleaning things off and fixing things up.
You remember later, when Jesus came into Jerusalem in the week He went to the cross, some chief priests and elders came to Him and said, “By what authority are You doing these things? Who gave You this authority?”
Jesus said, “Let Me ask you a question. You answer My question, and I will answer yours.” All He said was this: “John’s baptism—from heaven or from men?”
His arguers were silenced. Everybody knew that John’s voice, his baptism, and his ministry were from heaven.
Jesus says, “What did you come out to hear? Just a speaker? Just a novelty? Some kind of a show? Did you come out to the wilderness to see a parade?” No. You came out because you heard something. What did you hear? “Repent.” Then Jesus came in as the King.
I share these things because I believe servants of God have a ministry today, even in these last days. Just as John spoke to Israel, I think part of our ministry is speaking to the church and awakening the church.
How? The church has gotten so encrusted with so much stuff that we do not know how to define what church is anymore. Of course, I am speaking to the choir here.
People do not know what the church is. People do not know what membership means. People have an idea of ministry that is not at all as described in the New Testament. There have been layers and layers of human traditions, interpretations, and ways thrown on top of the church.
When somebody comes as a servant of the Lord in the last day, I believe the main burden is to clear the foundation so that people can see Jesus in the church.
We can call Him Head. Everybody calls Him Head of His church. Everybody calls Him the foundation of the church. But so much other stuff has been added onto it that sometimes you cannot tell, among all these wings and additions, where the church really is. It is people.
We need to be able to see and clarify this foundation that has gotten so covered up. The church is Jesus Christ.
Most of you know that I was a pastor in a church many years ago. I came to my first conference, and I will never forget it. That was the first time I ever heard it. I went to college, a good Baptist college. I studied religion. I went to seminary for four years and got my degree. They screwed a halo on my head.
I was serving as a pastor, and Lance said, for the first time I ever heard it: “The church is Christ.” First time.
You all know what that means. But if you throw a stone beyond the walls of this auditorium, how many more people know what that means? How cluttered things have gotten.
Our testimony needs to be on a clear foundation of Jesus Christ—Jesus Christ, center and circumference. What a wonderful way, Lance, of putting that: center and circumference. That is the church.
This organic body that we have been baptized into, and the whole way the body works, is so different from the way church organizations work. All of that clutter, all of that clutter.
The Lord is looking for some prepared people who are simple, who are standing in Jesus Christ, and Christ is in them. They understand the shared life we have together in Christ, through Christ, with Christ, and in the power of Christ.
I remember the second time I went to Russia, teaching in a Bible school. I talked about this “Christ in you” thing and shared some simple things on it. Afterwards, a number of people in the back of that classroom were just crying. They were going out to serve God and preach the gospel; they were great young people.
But they had never heard that Christ was their life. They had never heard that. They were just weeping for joy.
I do not think that in this last day what we need is apostles or prophets or anything like that, so-called. That is just positions. We need the functions.
What we need is a voice that cries out in a wilderness of the church and says, “Here is the Lord. This is the church. This is the kingdom.”
There is a whole other subject that we cannot go into tonight. So many Christians have no idea what we are talking about when we say that we are in the church and we are in the kingdom, but there is a difference.
We need to share these things. The gospel of the kingdom of God needs to be preached in all the world as a testimony to the nations, and then the end will come. Oh, to know the kingdom, to be servants of the kingdom, and to have all of this clutter clarified so that people can see.
This is our problem: if we go and share that the church is Christ, but we are not living in it, then there is no testimony of that. If we are merely getting together with a couple of Christians for an hour or two a week, with no body life and no shared Christ together, we have no testimony.
If we share this word, the voice has no ratification. That is where you and I are up against it, unless we are willing to go through our wilderness and learn the lessons of body life and the reality of the church.
Then somebody says, “What are you talking about?” and we can actually say, “Come and see,” rather than, “Well, do not come to our place. I think you should go down to Richmond.”
No, no, no. Are we working it out where we live? Are we a reality? Is there spiritual reality there? That is what the wilderness does. It brings us out of a lot of soulish baggage into a spiritual reality which is so simple.
That is why John’s Gospel is so precious for the church. It is all about spiritual reality. If He is not our bread, and if He is not our resurrection, then whatever we are calling ourselves, it is not the reality that is necessary for the church to be perfected.
There is the first part about it. Then there is just one other thing I would like to say. Not only did John speak as the voice and say, “This is the kingdom of God,” and suddenly the kingdom was alive to them, but the transition moment—the actual moment of linkage—was when he said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world.”
The day before, he baptized Jesus, not knowing exactly Who He was. But when the Spirit came down and rested upon Him, then he knew. The next day, when Jesus came by, John said:
Behold, the Lamb of God,
that taketh away the sin of the world.
Suddenly, the Lord of heaven was linked to us. “Taketh away the sin of the world.” Now it is more than just Israel, is it not? The Lamb of God died on behalf of all of us.
This was John’s voice speaking out—his highest message. The link was made. We could know what it means to be saved because of the Lamb of God.
There is gospel right there. I suppose this was John’s highest moment of ministry, when he made that statement, “Behold, the Lamb of God.” Right after that, probably his best disciples left him. John and some others left him and started following Jesus.
John’s ministry kind of went down, while Jesus’ ministry went up. Next thing you know, Jesus and His people are baptizing more people than John’s, and John’s disciples are a little jealous.
John was not jealous, was he? No, because he said, “It is my time. It is my time to decrease. But the One of Whom I said I am not worthy to untie His sandals—He has shown up. I am His friend. I am a friend of the Bridegroom.”
Probably within a year of that time, he died. He was beheaded—a friend of the Bridegroom.
John’s voice was both to the kingdom of God and to Israel, awakening them to the reality of the kingdom and the soon-coming Messiah. It was also to the world. He spoke this revelation of Who Jesus was: the Lamb of God.
I would like to end by suggesting that we also, as assemblies and as the church in the last days, need to preach the gospel.
If we are to be even the hidden ones, even a small assembly, I still think we need to be willing to go out and preach the gospel. There are still people who are hungry and in darkness. There are still people who are looking for a Savior.
Until the day Jesus comes back, should we just stop this whole business? I think sometimes part of the problem with the reality in our fellowship life is because we are not witnessing and moving out beyond ourselves.
We can gather together and have a great rah-rah session, but that does not prove what kind of faith we really have. When you go outside the walls and start speaking of Jesus in hostile territory, you find out the reality of the Lord’s ratification.
The Lord still wants to bring people to the Lord. That gospel of the kingdom includes the gospel of salvation. I do not think we should just leave it to big gospel organizations.
The Lord is doing a wonderful work gathering people in. During this time we have been speaking here, some six thousand people have been saved, according to the recent figures on how many people are getting saved around the world. It is a tremendous thing.
It is wonderful to hear news of how the Lord is breaking out in different initiatives. Recently—well, within the last six months—some Romanians came by. Maybe they came to where you were. They stopped in a number of places and came through New York.
They told us this wonderful story. The Romanians meet in a group, and whatever the case is, God has decided in Romania to start saving gypsies. It is like a whole new open door.
Their young people have been going down to the gypsy villages, where the parents said, “No, no, no, do not go down there.” But the young people are going down to these villages, and the gypsies are getting saved as fast as they can preach. Is that not wonderful?
Then last year, when I went back to Russia, the door was kind of closing in Russia—at least that huge ingathering that we saw. The season is sort of winding down. But it is interesting: southern Russia is opening up with the gospel to Muslims.
The whole of southern Russia is nominally Muslim, Sunni nominal Muslims who do not know much about anything. The church has gone down there and found a ripe field. People are being saved.
I thank God for such people who are willing to go into these territories and preach the gospel. Is it not amazing that Muslims are being saved? You have heard the stories: dreams, miracles, all kinds of things. The Muslims are really getting upset—the leaders do not know what to do about this. But the Lord has decided to put His finger right there.
Now, where we live—maybe where you live is tougher than New York—it is not easy to go out and preach the gospel in New York. But we go out with a little band, and we try. We hand out tracts, try to talk and preach, and sing.
We do that because we believe it is important for our own sakes to be willing to lay down our fears, trust the Lord, and go out. I think that is part of our testimony.
Even as John spoke of the Lamb of God, so we should speak of the Lamb of God as God’s people.
We know one thing: because of His patience, if for no other reason, God loves His people. He loves us. He is waiting so patiently. He wants us to be perfected and faithful.
He wants to do that hidden work in the wilderness so that we can learn how to be those of the Spirit and not of the flesh. He wants to train us and teach us how to speak the gospel and speak the Word of God.
It is a wonderful day we live in. Things are near the end. But now is the time for us to be that faithful vessel, where the Lord can say, “I am ready to take the link.”
Faithful little ones. Faithful, serving God. Hidden life, public life—whatever the Lord wants.
I do not say that you should go out and do what we are doing in New York. All I am saying is that you should pray about it: “Lord, how can we preach the gospel?” Be alive to what the Lord says and how He leads.
Let us turn to one last verse in Matthew 24. Just one verse of encouragement. In Matthew 24, our Lord starts talking about His coming and the various circumstances involved. Matthew 24:45-46:
Who then is the faithful and wise servant,
whom his lord hath set over his household,
to give them their food in due season?
Blessed is that servant,
whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing.
I do not know what kind of impressive things we have to do. All I know is that we need to be faithful to the Lord. We need to obey Him. However the Lord has enabled us as assemblies together—praying for one another, helping one another, doing these things—may it be that when the Lord comes again, He finds us so doing.
Not asleep. Not saying, “Oh Lord, the world is so tough out there. We just cannot share anymore. We are just waiting for You to come.” But faithful publicly, and faithful as the Lord deals with us in the inward ways.
May the Lord find us as a servant that He can say, “Well done.” May He come and receive us, find His bride ready, having sown all those righteousnesses of the saints into that wedding garment, now ready for the Lord.
Father, we thank You so much for John. We thank You so much that we are so near the end. We thank You so much for the link that You want to form with us, and thank You so much for Your love for Your children. What patience You bear with all of us, for sure.
Lord, teach us how to be faithful to You, both in our hidden life and in our public life. May we be servants of God. Lord, would You give us that voice that could speak regarding the truth of the simplicity of devotion to Christ, the truth of the foundation, and the reality that Christ is the church.
May we learn how to speak the gospel of the kingdom of God in these last days. Help us, Lord. Do help us. Have mercy upon us, Lord. Teach us Your ways.
We know we do not have it right yet, Lord, but we want to learn. Show us Your ways, O Lord, and help us be those who prepare the way for Your coming again. In Jesus’ name we pray.