When John the Baptist started drawing huge crowds in the wilderness, the Pharisees got nervous. Who does this guy think he is? They sent priests and Levites to find out. They first asked John if he was the Christ. No. How about Elijah? Nope. The Prophet? Not him either! The interrogators, frustrated no doubt with his answers so far and feeling pressure to bring something definitive back to the Pharisees, asked John, “Then why are you baptizing?” You see, it was Jews who were coming out to John to be baptized. That was outrageous even on its face. The Jews believed that they were the only people who did not need to be baptized. The Gentiles were unclean, not the Jews! There were some Jewish groups that practiced “proselyte baptism” for Gentiles who wanted to convert to Judaism. But that was self-baptism. They took a bath, essentially, in order to ritually cleanse themselves. But this was different, as John was administering the baptisms himself. So, these men sent from the Pharisees said in effect to John, “Who do you think you are?”
I remember a story years ago from a man who went to church in a nearby city. There were people from his small church going door to door in neighborhoods. They were asking people if they knew Jesus, sharing the gospel if they could, or at least asking if they could pray for them. And one day the pastor of this church got a phone call from another pastor in the city, one who led a much bigger congregation. And he asked the pastor of the smaller church, “What do you think you are doing? The neighborhoods where your people are witnessing are part of our territory.” To which the pastor of the small church said, “What? Your territory? I didn’t know that churches had territories.” Then he laughed and said, “With all due respect, brother, I believe it was John Wesley who said, ‘the world is my parish,’ or ‘my territory.’”
Amen. By the way, if we are sharing the gospel in the way the Bible presents it, there is no place, no people group, no classroom, no office, no playground, and no neighborhood that is off limits. The gospel is the power of God for salvation, wherever it is shared.
After John’s interrogators got nowhere with their first three questions and had eliminated Christ, Elijah, and the Prophet from their list of who he might be, they started to whine a little. “Hey, listen, we can’t go back to the Pharisees with three no answers. Help us out here. We need to know who you are. So…who are you?” John ran to Isaiah in his reply, and said, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’” Isaiah had declared that before the Messiah would appear, there would come a voice crying in the wilderness, “Build a road! Make it straight. Lift up the valleys and level the mountains, so the glory of the Lord may be revealed. This is the highway for the King!” The road grader Isaiah was talking about was John the Baptist, who told those questioning him, “That’s who I am. That’s what I have come to do. It’s not about me. It’s about Him. It’s the Lord!”
Need a why? There it is. We live and move and have our being because of Him. It is not about us; it is about the Lord.
Best why ever.
J. Mark Fox 