But all mean essentially the same, “I love you, my son” and/or “This is the son I love.” God
speaks so that John and the other people who were questioning John’s
identity would know who Christ was. Likewise, this also answered John’s
private prayer, which was to know for sure this was the Christ, the one
foretold of by the prophets.
Earlier, the people had asked John if he
was the one, and John said, “No. The Messiah would do more than
baptize you with water, He will baptize you with the Holy Ghost, He will
give the Holy Spirit to cleanse and purify our hearts.”
This means
John knew the scope, authority and limits of His earthly mission. He
knew and understood the historical role he was to play. As the greatest
prophet, John also already knew of the Holy Spirit and of the redeeming
grace of the Christ.
John’s preaching could only threaten the
hypocrites and unrepentant but Christ would be able to execute all of
John’s threats against those who were vain and worthless. John’s
preaching pressed things upon the hearts of his listeners. John’s
preaching followed God’s doctrine. It was practical, it reminded us of
our duty, it directed us and it wasn’t filled with amusing speculation,
unlike what many preachers do today. Despite all of this truth, John was
popular, with the Scribes, the Pharisees and Sadducees and regular
people, for all came to hear him.
When we preach about duty, we must
direct people to Christ. It is only Christ who can speak comfort to the
righteous, saying to them, “All will be well.” John reminds us in Luke
3:17 that Christ is “the fan to separate the wheat from the chaff.”
Christ
will gather only the wheat into His barns, the good, serious people who
have sincerely followed Him and His teachings; these are the ones who
will hear and see God’s affirming love.
Today, so many of us are
doing things we know don’t please God. We live life in an angry, hateful
and evil way, then expect to be blessed, thinking because we have honored some biblical passage (which we probably have taken out of context). We look to heaven expecting to hear affirming words of love from God, only to find, instead, evil raining down.
In
Luke 3:19, we read John’s rebuke of Herod, not only for living in
incest with his brother Philip’s wife but for many other evils, as well.
Those who are wicked in one instance are generally wicked in others.
Herod couldn’t bear John’s preaching anymore so he locked him up and
then had him beheaded. But by the time this happened, it was too late to
alter God’s plans, for out of the crowd had already come an itinerant
carpenter from Nazareth seeking to be baptized, Jesus the Christ.
We
must not think Herod did all of this evil without some divine counsel,
which neither he nor we know little of. Why silence “the voice crying in
the wilderness?” Why shut up such a great preacher?
Well, because the faith of John’s disciples had to be tested and the unbelief of those who rejected John’s preaching had to be punished. Therefore,
just as John had been the forerunner in preaching Christ’s coming, John
also had to be a forerunner in a suffering like Christ’s. So now at
age 30 Jesus was ready to begin His earthly ministry, at the same age as
Joseph when he stood before Pharaoh (Genesis 41:46), and David when he
began his reign (II Samuel 5:4) and, oddly enough, the same age priests
were to start their official ministerial service (Numbers 4:3).
When
the sun rises, the morning star disappears. When all these things
happened, the people knew God was pleased and they could hear and see
God’s affirming love.
The Rev. Dr. R. Joaquin Willis is pastor of
the Church of the Open Door UCC in Miami’s Liberty City community. He
may be reached at 305-759-0373 or
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PRAYERFUL LIVING 
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