John the Baptist and the Fire of God # 1

John the Baptist and the Fire of God # 1

Luke 3:16

We are going to look into the Gospel as recorded by Luke and the third chapter.

I suppose most of us can quote John 3:16 without looking at it. How many of us can quote Luke 3:16? It's the other side of the coin, it should be as well known. Well, here it is in the good King James version.

Luke 3 verse 16: "John answered, saying unto them all, I indeed baptize you with water; but one mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose: He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit" and in this version, "and with fire:" but the original says: "Holy Spirit fire." Because God is a consuming fire. The Holy Spirit is a Spirit of fire. And Jesus said, "I've come to bring fire on earth." There is no escaping fire. This is a kind of a cliche of mine, but I still get a lift out of saying it, I believe that tonight the world is going to hell fire because the church has lost Holy Spirit fire. It's as simple as that.

Between Malachi and Matthew you've got four hundred years of blackness without any prophetic light. Four hundred years of stillness without any prophetic voice. And then suddenly, dramatically, unexpectedly this strange man, John the Baptist, came streaking across a sky that was totally black. The Word says he was a "burning and shining light." Jesus, the greatest character in history, says, "There was no man comparable to John the Baptist." Not Isaiah not Jeremiah not any of those towering saints. He is a very, very remarkable character.

John the Baptist appears in the wilderness. It was not only a wilderness geographically, it was a wilderness morally, it was a wilderness politically, it was a wilderness religiously. You see, you go back in the Scripture and you read about Ezrah and Nehemiah. They established a government over Israel made of a hundred and twenty priests and rulers. These priests and elders ruled over Israel. Four hundred and fifty years they dominated that nation. I say: this was a jungle, theologically.

In 170 BC there was a man with the strange name of Anticohus Epiphanes. You need to look up his name and his relatives. He took over Jerusalem, he polluted the temple, he made the Jews sacrifice to idols, he built a statue of Jupiter where the altar of the burnt offering should have been. He burnt the Scriptures publicly. He prohibited the worship of Jehovah. And all this horrendous stuff went on. In 37 BC came Herod the Great. He betrayed the nation to the Romans, he fostered immorality, he massacred the noble people, he built that magnificent temple that was standing.

Now with this horrendous background of murder and rape and debauchery and suffering and agony, John the Baptist steps on the stage. A remarkable character.

You see, today we try to organize. We try to get a bunch of people together. God never did that. God takes individual men. He takes Moses to the backside of the desert. John the Baptist was in the wilderness until the day of his showing forth.

Jesus, the Son of God who had left the glory, spent thirty years in training to minister! John the Baptist thirty years in training. The apostle Paul at least thirty years. Moses at least forty years; and we want to go to Bible school six months and come out like a super prophet! It's the time factor that kills most of us. Tell me how much time you spend alone with God and I will tell you how spiritual you are. Not how many meetings you go to. Not how many gifts you have. Not how many sermons you preach. Not how many records you've made.

Tell me what time you spend alone with God...and I'll tell you how spiritual you are.

The Word here tells me about this remarkable man, John the Baptist, that he was in the wilderness until the day of his showing forth. Going forth at the command of God Himself, of course.

He was in the wilderness, of all places. It says he had his dwelling among wild beasts, ferocious things. The remarkable thing to me, as I read this again today, is this: he had no role model. Elisha had Elijah, Joshua had Moses as a role model. Timothy had Paul as a super model in front of him. And right though the Scripture you find these men that have lived with some giant and they've become like him. But this man has no model before him. What did he do wandering on the rocks? "He ate wild honey," it says. And he was with wild beasts and he was a wild man.

Luke chapter 3 gives you a kind of run down on the awesomness of this man's ministry. Look at this first verse:

"the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Ceasar, Pontius Plate being governor of Judea and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip the tetrarch of Iturea and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene, Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests,"

That's about as refreshing as a mouth full of sand, isn't it? What in the world do you do with it? Except it gives you a framework.
"Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests," that's illegal. They could only have one high priest and they got two. Then came "John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness. And he came into all the country about Jordan preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins." Boy, that's a dirty thing to preach these days! Who preaches repentance? There is an old hymn that says, Repentance is "to leave the sins I've done before, and show that I in earnest grieve, by doing them no more."

~Leonard Ravenhill~

(continued with # 2)

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