September 25, 2013

From Jim McGuiggan... Matthew 4:17: The Baptist: Last Call to a Nation

Matthew 4:17: The Baptist: Last Call to a Nation

The ministry of John the Baptist was a failure. Well, that can’t be true because a ministry carried out faithfully can never be a failure, and John did his job magnificently. But he wouldn’t be the first prophet that worked toward a goal and didn’t gain that specific goal. Jeremiah preached for over forty years, calling his nation to repentance, and had to watch them going off into exile because they wouldn’t heed. Josiah began a spirited renewal that was too little too late. Christ tied Israelite leaders to their confession that their fathers slew the righteous and the prophets (Matthew 23:29-36, see Matthew 5:12 and Stephen’s stinging rebuke in Acts 7:52, "Was there ever a prophet your fathers didn’t persecute...?").
In sending John, God said that he was sending someone to get them to heed the law of Moses, someone to turn the hearts of the people back toward God and one another (Malachi 4:4-5). If they would not pay attention they would experience the terrible day of the Lord and the land would be smitten with a curse (4:4-5, compare Matthew 3:7-10 and "the wrath to come"). Malachi 4 offers assurance to the receptive and judgement to the impenitent and that’s what John offers in Matthew 3:7-11-12.
God’s call through John was righteous and the response he looked for from the nation was righteousness. It didn’t matter that he knew they would eagerly rush to John and then wander away again. The offer was genuine and the rejection by the leadership and those they led was a real choice.
John was sent to prepare the nation to receive the Christ (see Malachi 3:1; 4:4-5 and Isaiah 40:3). Had they received the Christ as John urged them to do (John 1:19-34; 3:22-30) John would have gained his immediate aim. In that respect John’s ministry was a "failure"; but it was a glorious "failure" and that’s no failure.
His ministry was set in the context of a nation that was unfaithful to God, a nation that dishonoured the Torah. The book of Malachi is a sustained critique of such a nation for such a crime. See especially chapter 3:3-7. The people are called in 4:4 to "remember the law of my servant Moses, the decrees and laws I gave him at Horeb for all Israel." Malachi 3:3 tells us that this turning from God and his decrees was not a new thing—it happened since the days of their fathers. (Compare Jeremiah 32:30-33 and Isaiah’s blistering remark in 48:8.)
So whatever we might think of the Jewish people in Palestine when John appeared, they needed—as a people—to turn to God in repentance and he had come to call them back to the Torah.
When he first appeared there was an initial flocking to his preaching and baptism. But like Josiah’s work, it was too little too late. He ended up with his own little group of disciples and presumably the populace drifted away from his message, the way many disciples drifted off from the message and person of Jesus Christ (compare John 6:66). We’re sure of this, that when Herod threw John in prison there was no uproar even though the people were sure he was a prophet. And when he was murdered there were no mass demonstrations mounted.
It was when Christ heard that John was thrown into prison (Matthew 4:17) that his own ministry formally began. The Baptist’s imprisonment seemed to be the signal for the beginning of Christ’s own ministry that would inexorably move toward his own death. It would appear that John was Israel’s last hope under the terms of the Mosaic covenant and when that failed the enactment of new covenant began in the ministry of the Lamb himself. In his flesh (compare Romans 7:4 and Ephesians 2:14-16) the Mosaic structure was brought down and with it "Israel after the flesh" as a nation covenanted to God via the Mosaic covenant came to an end. God’s covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—which pre-dated Sinai—remained intact so Israel as their descendants were not excluded from God’s love and care. But the covenant of Sinai had served its multiple purposes—even in its "failure" (Hebrews 8:7 and Romans 8:3).
With the Baptist the curtain was coming down on the Sinai covenant and the last word of the prophets that called the nation to be faithful to that covenant was spoken. Now was the moment of crisis—the Messiah had come. Compare Matthew 11:12-14.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.

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