Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Do they still have print tabloids? I used to see them all the time when I was a kid going through line at the grocery store. You know, they got the impulse buy section where you're waiting to check out, but you're still in shopping mode, and you're like, oh, I'll buy some tic-tacks or gum or batteries, or I'll buy a copy of the National Inquirer. The National Enquirer was a lot of celebrity gossip. And then there were other tabloids right next to it that were kookier. They more focused on cryptids like Sasquatch and the Loch Ness Monster and aliens and alien abductions and crashes and things like that. And Elvis, Elvis was always a very big theme on the covers of those tabloids because I don't remember when Elvis died, but maybe the late 70s. So, you know, I was a kid growing up in the early 90s. There was all this speculation that Elvis was still alive, that he'd faked his death. Now that speculation has died down because he probably would be. Well, actually. Hang on. Would Elvis Presley be dead anyway at this point? A second. I need to know this. Well, Elvis was born in 1935. Man, he was just a kid when he got famous. No wonder it went off the rails. Yeah, he was born in 1935, so he theoretically could still be alive at this point. He was only 42 when he died. That is crazy. Okay, well, anyways, people like to imagine that Elvis was still alive back in the day. You know, people like to speculate about where he might be hiding and what would happen if he came back. And likewise, in the first century, there was a character from the Old Testament who'd been gone for a long time, but he was a very big deal, very influential. And he didn't really die. He more left under miraculous, mysterious circumstances. And there's some prophecy to support the idea that maybe he would be coming back someday. And this character is Elijah. People in the first century really had an eye out for Elijah. And it looks like there was even maybe a little bit of confusion as to whether the return of Elijah was part and parcel the same thing as the arrival of the Messiah, or whether Elijah would play some sort of role in the arrival of the Messiah, and whether Elijah, if he ever did come back, like if it would just be Elijah again, or maybe like a symbolic version of Elijah. And so the obvious character that people were going to wonder about as to whether or not he might be some sort of reincarnation of Elijah or just Elijah back from the beyond, is John the Baptist. And when John the Baptist is being questioned by the religious leaders in John chapter one, they eventually straight up ask him, Are you Elijah? Here's how that passage goes. We started working on it yesterday. John 1:19. Now, this was John the Baptist's testimony when the Jews of Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, I am not the Christ. So it's unequivocal, no debating. John the Baptist doesn't want any ambiguity there. Well, they're not going to be satisfied with that because they're like, well, you got to be somebody famous. You got to fit into this story somewhere. So verse 21, it says, They asked him, Well, then who are you? Are you Elijah? And at first glance, here it's going to be easy for us to dismiss this question or even make fun of the Jewish leadership for asking it because it sounds like aliens and Elvis tabloid kind of stuff. It's a dumb question, right? Elijah, he's been gone for 800-ish years. How could this possibly be Elijah? But I actually think it's a very reasonable question. I'm going to make my case for why it's a reasonable question here in just a minute. I also think it's the right question to ask if you're trying to serve your constituents. And so it's really easy for us to just dismiss anything that the Jewish leadership does in the Gospels because they are the bad guys and they ultimately do double and triple down on getting it wrong. But this is one of those places where I think they're actually doing a pretty good job. I mean, they see that John the Baptist is a big deal and people are interested. So even if they don't go with the perfect motives, and yesterday I talked about how I think they are not the perfect motives, and I do think their minds are clouded by being too loyal to their thought blob. So even if their motives aren't perfect, they still do the diligence. They do the right thing. I mean, these guys hiked their butts all the way out there to the Jordan River. That wasn't easy. Then they find John the Baptist and they ask him obvious question number one: Are you the Christ? Are you the Messiah? And he says, I am not the Christ. Probably goes back, baptizes a few more people. I imagine the religious leaders then go and huddle up again because they tended to like to do that. And they come back over and they ask, then who are you? Are you Elijah? He said, I am not. John the Baptist would be reasonable to interpret their question as literal. Are you him stepping back out of heaven? And John the Baptist is like, I am not. And he offers no further explanation about things he and Elijah might have in common. That's just that. But I still think this is a reasonable question on the part of the religious leadership. And here's why we're going to dip back into the Old Testament here. Elijah is one of the huge name prophets of the Bible. And I've never really thought about ranking him out, but he's right at the top of important Old Testament prophets, and he factors in heavily to the second half of first kings. He's very effective as a prophet, and the blessing of God is clearly upon him, and miraculous things go where he goes. And in particular, Elijah is in a long-term showdown with a wicked king of the divided northern kingdom of Israel and this wicked king's wife. This wicked king is Ahab, and his wife is Jezebel. They are the epitome in the Old Testament of wicked, godless rulership that gets everything wrong. I mean, idolatry, depending on contracts and warriors and deals with their neighbors instead of depending on God, persecuting the prophets violently. I mean, they're horrible. It's an embarrassment to the brand name Israel that these two are sitting the throne. In 1 Kings 18, we get the very famous account of Elijah challenging the prophets of Baal, Ahab and Jezebel. They liked this idol, this false god Baal, and they had a bunch of prophets, and Baal was sort of the fashionable deity for the northern kingdom at this time. And Elijah has this dramatic showdown with them atop Mount Carmel. And in this battle of the dueling prophets, the prophets of Baal are trying to demonstrate the power of Baal, and they cut themselves and wail and cry and do all this nonsense and nothing happens. And Elijah makes fun of them the whole time. Basically, he's like, maybe yell out, or maybe he's sleeping, maybe he's pooping. Paraphrase is mine, but it's not that much of a paraphrase. And then Elijah stacks the deck against himself to make it even harder for there to be any natural explanation for the miraculous fire from heaven that is about to occur. And then at the right moment, Elijah steps forward and prays to God, O Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again. And then the fire of the Lord, like the one that showed up when the temple was dedicated during the time of Solomon, the fire of the Lord shows up and it burns up all of that sacrifice that Elijah had had drenched, so it would be even harder to make that happen, and burns the wood and the stones and the soil, and it's just inarguable what happened. And all the people see it, and they fell prostrate, which is a posture of worship, and cried, The Lord, he is God, the Lord He is God. Elijah turned the people's hearts back to the Lord. Well, there's a prophecy that comes along hundreds of years after that story I just read, but also a few hundred years before the time of Christ. And it's right at the end of the Old Testament. It's right at the end of the book of Malachi in chapter four. The Old Testament concludes with God speaking through and to the prophet. He says, Remember the law of my servant Moses, the decrees and laws I gave him at Horeb for all Israel. See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the 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. So even that language there about this new Elijah showing up and turning the hearts of the people, I mean, you caught it, right? That's an echo back to what I just read you in 1 Kings 18 with the showdown with the prophets of Baal. So you can see why the Jewish leadership at this time, even if they're compromised and not getting everything right and they're a little too loyal to their thought bubble, you could see why they would long for a fiery leader like Elijah, both literally and figuratively, a fiery prophet like him to come along and turn the hearts of the people back to what is true and get rid of corrupt, evil, idolatrous leadership. Yeah, of course they wanted an Elijah to come along. But again, I mean, how's that gonna happen? He's been gone for 800 years. But again, again, as I told you earlier, Elijah didn't really die like Elvis. Maybe he's still out there, the religious leadership thought to themselves. In 2 Kings chapter 2, Elijah has taken on a Padawan, he's taken on a mentee, a protege, an heir apparent named Elisha. Bummer how close those names are, but we can keep it straight. And at the very end of Elijah's life, he hands off his prophetic authority to Elisha. And right after that happens in 2 Kings 2:11, it says, as they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. That's it, that's the end of Elijah's earthly life. So after 800 years, look, of course, it probably seemed like kind of a long shot to everybody, but Malachi was a real prophet, and just 400 years before the time of Christ, he had said the stuff that he said about Elijah showing up again and turning the hearts of the children to their fathers, you know, metaphorical way of saying turning people's hearts, getting things back on track. So the religious leadership asks the first obvious question, Are you the Christ? John says no. Then they ask the next obvious question, Are you Elijah? And John says no. But that isn't really the end of the story in terms of the prophet Elijah in the Bible, nor is it the end of the story of the relationship between John the Baptist and Elijah. In this passage, John the Baptist is clearly rejecting the assertion that he is literally Elijah of old who's stepped back out of heaven to do this. But as the story unfolds, we're going to discover that indeed John the Baptist is this new Elijah that was promised at the end of the Old Testament, and Jesus himself is going to affirm that. In conclusion, I would say it's completely reasonable and right for us to have a laugh at ridiculous aliens and Elvis style tabloid clickbait questions, but we should not categorize the question that the Jewish leadership is asking of John the Baptist here the same way. It's a reasonable question, it's the right question, and we'll unpack it more next time around. All right, that's good for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.