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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