The Messenger of God: Lessons from the Life and Ministry of John the Baptist

By Rev. Justin M. Steward

The Messenger is a detailed study on the life and ministry of John the Baptist, including many important topics and considerations for the developing servant of the Lord. Throughout the book, Rev. Steward draws many valuable lessons from the life of the prophet – essentially how he became one of the greatest men ever born! His life and ministry help us understand that God not only carefully chooses His messengers, but He also plans their lives and forms them into vessels that He can use.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zion Christian Publishers
• Release date: Mar 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781596656635

Book preview

Institute

Introduction

The Life and Ministry of John the Baptist is an important study for God’s people. Historians and people from all walks of life value the lessons gained from the study of great men gone by. How much more should we glean from the life of the man whom Jesus gave the following approbation in Matthew 11:11: "Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist…"? Yet, this is not merely meant to be a factual study of a historic figure in the Bible. I believe that there are individual and corporate lessons to be extracted and employed in each one’s life and ministry from this study.

This study has been a personal prophetic message to me in the past few years of preparation for the ministry and that is why there is an emphasis placed upon the preparation for becoming God’s Messenger and His Voice (Mal. 3:1, Is. 40:3). I believe that these truths can be a benefit to all who read, especially to those preparing for the ministry. A study on the life and ministry of John the Baptist is especially relevant in this "eleventh hour where we are living in the days when Jesus Christ will soon come again (Matt. 20:6-9). The days are once again ripe for Elijah and a company of those with his spirit and power" to come and prepare the way for the Second advent of Jesus Christ (Luke 1:17).

The Expectation for the Messiah

The last prophet of the Old Testament, Malachi, declared, Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts (Mal. 3:1). He also declared in the last words of the Old Testament, Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: 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 (Mal. 4:5-6).

For more than four hundred years, the Jews waited for their Messiah. There was an expectation in the hearts of the Jews that He would soon come, and that Elijah would come first to prepare the way. The time was ripe for the fulfillment of all the prophecies that spoke of the mighty king that would come to throw off the yoke of foreign rule and set up a kingdom where righteousness reigned. Though the Jews did not fully understand that their Messiah would come on two separate occasions separated by two thousand years of the Church Age, they were correct to anticipate His soon appearance.

The four-hundred-year gap between the prophet Malachi and the narrative of the New Testament provided the immediate backdrop to the life of our subject - John the Baptist. There was a lot of upheaval in the earth in those days, and especially in the land that is currently known as the Land of Palestine. Many Jews had returned to their homeland after having spent seventy years of captivity in Babylon. The first of three returns began in 536 BC after the decree of Cyrus, which is recorded in the Old Testament books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Despite the return to their own land, the Jews were still under the rule of a foreign power and, incidentally, this would not change for nearly two thousand years.

Alexander the Great lived from 356 BC to 323 BC. He was the king of a united Greece who defeated the Persians, and conquered much of the known world of his time. These things were all seen and predicted by the prophets, particularly the prophet Daniel. Alexander’s death brought a division to his vast empire. His four generals divided up the land and ruled it as four separate kingdoms. Israel was constantly caught in the middle of wars between the ruler of the northern portion (Syria) and the southern portion (Egypt).

Rome began to emerge on the scene as a dominant force in the earth around 27 BC and its empire dominated the earth at the time of the birth of John and Christ. The Prophet Daniel had rightly predicted that these things would happen, and declared with accuracy the rise of Persia, Greece, and Rome (Daniel Chapters 2,7, and 11), thus showing that the God of Israel truly does rule in the affairs of men and calls things that are not as though they are (Dan. 4:17, Is. 46:10). In the forefront of the Jewish scholar’s mind would have been the promise of the stone cut out without hands that would destroy all these kingdoms, bring in the Messiah’s rule, and give the kingdom to the saints (Dan. 2:43-45). The Jews were expecting and anxiously waiting for their king to come and save them from Roman occupation.

The scholars of that day would have known that the proper time was upon them, for they had the prophecies of Daniel that declared: "Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times" (Dan. 9:25). The commandment to rebuild and restore Jerusalem occurred in the days of Ezra under the reign of the Persian Monarch known as Artaxerxes. In the seventh year of his reign (457 BC) the decree to restore Jerusalem was given. The sixty-nine weeks mentioned by Daniel are accepted to be sets of seven years, therefore the sixty-nine weeks were speaking of a period of four hundred and eighty-three years. If these years are added to the date 457 BC it brings one to the year 26 AD. Therefore, those who knew the prophecies of Daniel should have been well aware of the time in which their Messiah would come. The time indeed was ripe and the people needed to be prepared for the One who was to come.

Chapter One

THE PROMISE OF A SON

In the following passage the Word of God introduces us to a couple of outstanding people:

There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judaea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia: and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. And they had no child, because that Elisabeth was barren, and they both were now well stricken in years (Luke. 1:5-7).

There are very few people who have received the commendation of being righteous before God and blameless. They walked in all of God’s commandments and ordinances. The Lord truly is a rewarder of those who seek Him and He promises many blessings in His word to those who walk in His ways (cf. Heb 11:6).

Deuteronomy chapter twenty-eight lists many of these blessings to God’s people if they would listen and obey the Word of God. These are often proclaimed in the Church today. A message, however, that is not being preached in many of our churches today is the fact that there are nearly twice as many curses listed for disobedience to God’s Commandments. The best thing parents can do for their children is to live righteously before them and God. God puts a high priority on righteousness and Zacharias and Elisabeth were chosen by God to bring forth a special son because of the lives they led before the Lord. Christians must believe that He is "able to present them faultless before his throne" as He surely did for this beautiful couple (Jude 1:24).

Zacharias and his wife Elisabeth were both descendants of Aaron the High Priest and were from the priestly division named after their forefather - Abijah. During the days of King David (circa 1000 BC), he organized the sons of Aaron into separate divisions for the rotation of priestly duties (1 Chron. 24). He arranged the Levitical priesthood into twenty-four teams or courses as they were called. He assigned sixteen courses to Eleazer and eight courses to Ithamar (1 Chron. 15, 16:4-6, 37-43). Abijah was of the eighth order (1 Chron. 24:10).

It is significant that the one who would introduce the Christ  – who would usher in a new dispensation of priests after the order of Melchizedec to Israel – was himself a descendent of the old order of the Aaronic priesthood (Heb. 5:10). Had John followed the career path of his father, he could have been the last priest of the Old Covenant. Perhaps it also is not without significance that this man from the heritage of priests would identify the sacrifice for the sins of the human race –"the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world" (John. 1:29).

The Bible tells us that Zacharias and Elisabeth were old and stricken in years. Author Alfred Edersheim in his famed work The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah suggests that they were in their sixties (page 583). Some scholars have wrongly suggested that they must be younger than fifty because