Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast where we are working through the book of John, which we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about John today, but we're also going to talk about Isaiah today, because this is an Isaiah part of John. But first, a quaint story. I used to teach college classes in uh Zambia in Africa. It was a really cool gig. I missed the students. It was such an interesting, different environment. It was really fun going back and forth. Well, I should not say it was fun going back and forth. One way that I went back and forth was brutal. I would go from basically Yellowstone, Jackson-ish Wyoming, down to Atlanta, Georgia. And then I would take a flight on Delta from Atlanta all the way to Johannesburg, South Africa. And let me tell you, the Mercator projection, the way we normally see the map of the world, it is a great big fat lie because that is so much further than it looks. And it looks far. So I'd get there, I'd be exhausted, spend a day in Johannesburg, and then the next day you'd fly a lot further up to Losaka, Zambia, and then you'd drive out into the bush where the college was. It was just a crazy thing to do again and again. I did not enjoy that version of the trip very much. But there's another version of the trip where sometimes it's more economic or whatever to route through Europe. And it was more broken up because you'd have several legs of the trip. But what I liked about that is I could just go look at history stuff in Europe. And the bummer was that I was alone. So I'm in all these great places just by myself with my little backpack, toodling around, looking at things, being in awe, having no one to tell about it. And on one such trip, I was in Rome. I went to the Vatican City. That's somewhere I've gone a lot. I really like Rome, but it's kind of weird being there by yourself. So I went to Vatican City, I went to St. Peter's Basilica, and then right there adjacent to St. Peter's, not on the Vatican Museum side, but on the other side, they had a special display that week of like the history of the Bible. I went in there and they had uh Gutenberg Press, and you could actually work, they had a working version of it. You could work the press, and I printed out a page, I think, from Ezekiel or Ecclesiastes. I still have it somewhere. I should find that. And also in there, they had a fully unrolled replica of the great scroll of the prophet Isaiah that was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls in from the Qumran settlement, from this group of people way back in the day called the Essenes, who were around during the time of Jesus and John the Baptist. They were a group of people who fled into the desert and had a strong messianic vision and felt like rejectionism was kind of the way to prepare themselves for the arrival of the Messiah. And they were really into the Bible and they were really into recording and copying scripture, and the Dead Sea Scrolls are this amazing treasure trove. Jeff wrote the link down there to the videos I did on the YouTube channel about the Dead Sea Scroll stuff. If you I mean, if you just heard of that, but you don't know much about it, it's awesome. Well, the big treasure in this very impressive trove of ancient scrolls that they found there in the mid-20th century, and the most intact of them all is the great scroll of the prophet Isaiah. And it's huge. I mean, it's breathtaking to see the whole thing unfurled. I mean, it takes like kind of a long time to walk from one end of it to the other. And as I was looking at that, I was thinking, all right, well, why would they care so much about this book of all the books of the Old Testament? And it really didn't require too much gaming it out to figure out, well, you know, they were looking forward to the Messiah. And Isaiah has got just, I mean it's got more Messiah stuff than maybe anything else. Zechariah has a lot of Messiah stuff as well. I don't know which one has more per capita, but Isaiah is loaded with messianic imagery, and it's no surprise at all that the gospels quote from Isaiah constantly, especially the Synoptic Gospels. Isaiah actually doesn't come up quite as much in John, but it's all over Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Synoptic Gospels. Why? Well, because Isaiah predicts a ton of stuff that has to do with the arrival of the Messiah, and a ton of stuff about what's needed for the people to get their heads right in order to respond rightly to the Messiah when he shows up. So, with all of that in the back of our minds, let's look at the next part of this passage we've been working on in John chapter 1. I'm just going to pick it up from the beginning, John 1 19. Now, this was John's testimony when the Jews of Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. He didn't fail to confess, but confessed freely. I am not the Christ. Well, then I asked him, Well, and who are you? Are you Elijah? He said, I am not. Are you the prophet? He answered, Nope. Finally, they said, Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself? John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, I'm the voice of one calling out in the desert. Make straight the way for the Lord. Okay, so that's a pretty interesting dynamic. They come in with their presuppositions. You kind of get a sense of what their thought blob imagined could be going on here. It's one of three things. You'll notice they don't have a fourth option. They exhausted the three possibilities that they'd been probably debating heavily internally. They get three no's, and so they're just left with they're a loss. Well, we know you're somebody. We know you're something. Who are you? And isn't that interesting that they want to push him on that? That it they know he's not just some guy. Oh, well, I'm I'm John. I live over here. My parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth, you might have heard of them. You guys probably know my dad. And I just, I don't know, I just got it in my head that I was going to go out here and say a bunch of stuff about God and repentance and stuff, and then do baptizing, which, you know, I know hasn't been the most popular ritual among our people. I I know we more have used it in the past for sort of an onboarding ceremony for Gentiles who become Jewish, like a one-time ritual purification to get rid of all that dirty Gentile sin. But, you know, I got to thinking about it, and I was like, I think it should just be a thing that we do more as like an act of repentance for for Jews as well. So that's pretty much who I am. Again, my name is John, and they're calling me the Baptist because of the baptizing thing that I'm doing. And you probably know my my dad. So that's who I am. Who are you guys? That would be a more normal exchange that people would have, but they know the religious leaders know he isn't just some guy with a story. They know there's some sort of prophetic, messianic thing happening here. And so they ask a question that is kind of weird. Who are you? And also they're clearly under pressure from the home office to come back with something. If they walk all the way out there, it's an expensive long trip. They're gonna be annoyed and discouraged to have to go back, and then their superiors are gonna be like, Why didn't you press him? That was expensive. We sent you out there to do the you know what? We're just gonna send better priests and Levites next time. You guys just got demoted. Congratulations, slackers. I mean, they got to come back with an answer. They were sent to do a job. What do you say about yourself? Answer. There's also a sense of entitlement that's present in the way they're asking the question. You owe us, we're the gatekeepers here. We're the ones who sort of make the decisions about the spiritual well-being of the people. We're the ones who kind of dictate the pace of play here when it comes to Messiah and prophecy things, and any such activity, you know, it runs through us. And so I hear in this, especially when I read it in the context of the rest of the gospels, I hear some gatekeeperiness here. I hear mild annoyance that this is going on, and there's it hasn't been proper permitting to this point. Well, John doesn't ever give him a name, not at all. I mean, at no point does he say, I am John and I do this. Instead, he references back to the prophet Isaiah, and dang, we're not going to get through all the Isaiah stuff. Surprise! But we're gonna do one. He references back to Isaiah chapter 40, and this is one of the messianic prophecies on that big giant scroll that it took me so long to walk past in Rome that time, that is a reference not to the Messiah, but to stuff surrounding the Messiah, specifically to this forerunner who is to come. Isaiah 40, starting in verse 1 Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, and that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. A voice of one calling, In the desert, prepare the way for the Lord, make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low, the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain, and the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. So these guys come out and they ask a question Are you this guy? Are you this guy? Are you this guy? They get no, no, no in response to that. And then they say, Well, then you have to tell us who you are. It's mandatory. We're we get to tell people who they have to tell us who they are. You have to, you didn't do the paperwork. And John still doesn't give them a name. Instead, he quotes a verse back to them that they all dang well knew, and that's the one I just read you from Isaiah 43, which is indicative that he's not really a guy at all. He's not really a name at all. He's not an influencer, he's not a celebrity, he's not trying to get clicks, he's not trying to get followers or build up his following. He's just a voice. That's it. The message is who he is. That's a pretty humble stance for somebody who's made enough waves to attract the attention of the religious leaders clear out in this remote place. But John does humility pretty well the whole time he's on screen. I'm the voice of one calling out in the desert, make straight the way of the Lord. Is that a challenge back to the religious leaders? I don't know, in the larger context of the gospels, it kind of sounds like it. I sense some defiance there. No, I I won't give you my name. I will give you this. Similar in tone to when people come to Jesus with questions that are loaded the wrong way, and he's like, Nah, I got a question for you. Or, nah, I'm not gonna answer that the way you want me to answer it. Because John is playing a different game than the religious leaders, and Jesus is playing a different game. And it goes on in Isaiah 40. The religious leaders who were asking John these questions, they would have known this passage. It says, A voice says, Cry out, and I said, What shall I cry? Here's the answer. All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass, the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever. The heart of John's message is change your heart, change your posture, repent. The kingdom of heaven is at hand, the age of the Messiah is upon us. That's a call toward humility, that's a call toward evaluating and getting a sober view of who you are and your own mortality and your own limits. And it's a challenge to assume a right posture before God, who transcends all of these little quick passing seasonal things that the prophet Isaiah likens our lives and even our glory to. Yeah, he's come and go. Grass withers, flowers fall, but the word of the Lord endures forever. Dang. John has said a lot. He's communicated a lot of theology with just a few words so far. This is all he said. I am not the Christ. I am not. No, I am the voice of one calling in the desert, makes straight the way for the Lord. It's interesting because it seems like he's in the position of weakness here, and the religious leaders are in the position of strength. But so far the conversation demonstrates that John is drawing on a deep well of scriptural knowledge, a deep sense of clarity about who he is and what role he plays, and a keener awareness of what is unfolding with the Messiah and the grand redemptive plan of God. And in his situation, there's no better way to demonstrate that, especially to the priests and the Levites, than to dip right into prophecy from the prophet Isaiah. We'll unpack this conversation more next time around. I'm Matt, this is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.