The Story

"John the son of Zacharias." These names sound familiar. They bring pictures to my mind. I seem to see an old priest burning incense in the temple and an angel speaking to him. Who is it? And what is the angel saying? And now I see a home in a city among the hills of Judea, and the neighbors have come together to name a child, and the father writes the name on a tablet. Whose home is it? What has the father written? And now I am in the desert that borders the Dead Sea and the lower Jordan on the west. There are bare, dry hillsides and deep, rough gorges, but still a few flowers, and I seem to hear the hum of wild bees among the rocks and the chirping of big brown locusts. There were hermits living in this lonesome country, and one of them we know. He was about thirty years old. He had lived as a Nazarite: what does that mean? He wore a cloak of coarse camel's-hair cloth held by a leather belt. He was a stern, brave man of the deserts, and the time had come for him to do his work of making ready the people for the Lord.

He came now to the river Jordan, which flows in its deep channel down the eastern border of the land. The place was perhaps near the ford of the river some little way south of the Sea of Galilee, where many people were passing. Sometimes the trees come close and overhang the stream, but there are some open places with a beach of stones and a bank above where many people could sit and stand. They were coming from all sides. There were Pharisees and others from Judea: that was the part of the country from Mount Carmel southward, including Jerusalem and Bethlehem and Hebron. The old Herod was no longer king in Jerusalem, for he was dead. Judea was ruled by a governor, Pontius Pilate, who was sent by the emperor, Tiberius Caesar, who lived at Rome. And in Jerusalem the high priest Caiaphas lived and his father-in-law, Annas, who had been high priest and who still had great power. (John 18:13) Other people came from the northern hills near Nazareth, and from the shore of the little sea. That northern district was Galilee. Herod was the ruler, a son of the old king Herod. He ruled also the region east of Jordan, from the Sea of Galilee southward. This was called the Peraea, "the beyond." Philip, another son of the old king Herod, ruled the country east of the Sea of Galilee and northward to Mount Hermon. Caesarea Philippi, at the springs of the Jordan, had its name from him. And another governor ruled the district of Abilene, still further north in the mountains. People were coming from every part of the land.

John preached repentance. He told the people that they must stop doing the wrong things that they had been doing. He told them that they must share what they had with those who were in need. The publicans, the tax

gatherers, must not take more than was right. The soldiers must do violence to no man and must be content with their wages. Those who were sorry for their sins and resolved to do better were baptized by John in the river, and the washing was a sign that they were making their lives clean. John told them that the Lord was coming with much greater power than his. He told them that the Lord would separate the good from the bad, as the farmer separates the grain from the chaff, when it has been trodden out on the smooth spot of the earth which is called the threshing floor and is thrown by the big fan or shovel into the wind.

It was not far to Tiberias where Herod lived, a town which he had just built by the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Herod heard of John, but he was a bad man like his father. The Lord called him a fox, for he was crafty; and the wife whom he had married was worse than he. She was the wife of a brother Philip, not the Philip who ruled in the north, but a rich brother who lived in Jerusalem. John told Herod that he had done wrong, and the king was angry and shut up John in the castle of Machaerus, on the mountains east of the Dead Sea; and you know how by and by he sent and beheaded John in the prison. (Matthew 14:3-12)

And now one day as John was teaching and baptizing, the Lord came from Nazareth and was baptized. And do you know what beautiful sign John saw and what words he heard that made him sure that it was the Lord? Let us stand with the people by the river while we read the story.

1. Who was ruler of Judea at the time of our lesson? Where did he live? Who was ruler of Galilee? Where did he live?

2. What other name do we know for John the son of Zacharias? Where was he born? Where did he live as a young man? Where did he do his public work? Where did he die? About how old was he?

3. What did John tell the publicans to do? the soldiers?

4. What sign did John see when the Lord was baptized? What did it mean?

What form of the name Esaias is more familiar? Where is the prophecy about making straight the way of the Lord? What crooked things must be straightened? What low things must be raised? What high things must be made low in us to prepare for the Lord? (A.3527)

The washing of baptism pictured the deeper work that John was doing. There was a special reason for his baptizing in the Jordan. When we learn what is right from any source and correct our lives by it, it is a kind of washing; but the Jordan was the sacred stream at the entrance of the Holy Land, and it represents the Lord's commandments and His teaching of what is right. There is a power in these to overcome evil, which no other teaching has. This was why Naaman must wash in the Jordan and not in some other stream. (2 Kings 5:12, 13) John's baptism represented a cleansing of outward actions, and his teaching was of that kind, but this would prepare for cleansing of the inner thoughts and inmost feelings, which is meant by baptism with the Holy Spirit and with fire. (A.4255; T. 144)

The Jews prided themselves on being children of Abraham. There was no virtue in that; but to be children of Abraham in a deeper sense means to be children of the Lord and to live in heaven. John said that God could raise up such children from the stones. It means that a heavenly character would grow up from the simple facts of right and wrong which John was teaching, with those who would take them to heart. (E. 724)

If baptism represents putting away evil and repenting, why did the Lord need to be baptized? He never did anything wrong, but all the temptations to do wrong which come to men came to Him and with much greater power. He had to resist these, and to explore them and condemn them by the rule of the Commandments. He spoke of this as His baptism, and it was represented by His baptism in the Jordan. (Luke 12:50; A. 10239)

When we repent of any wrong thing the way is opened wider between us and heaven, and more of heavenly innocence can come down into our lives. As the Lord overcame each temptation to do wrong, the perfect Divine innocence came more fully into His human life. This was represented by the opening of heaven after His baptism, and the descent of the dove upon Him. (L. 19)

The genealogy in this chapter of Luke and that in Matthew 1 tell something of the history of the family into which the Lord was born. We know also that the Old Testament characters represent elements in every regenerating soul, and the Old Testament story is the story of regeneration. As applied to the Lord, it is the story of His glorification. This thought shows a meaning in these genealogies in Matthew and in Luke and their relation to each other. They are given in reverse order. That in Matthew, from Abraham to Joseph, following the Old

Testament story, represents the formation step by step of the humanity of our Lord to be the tabernacle of the Divine. This in Luke, from Joseph to Abraham and to God, represents the filling of humanity with the Divine as it was prepared to receive it. This seems also to account for the position of the genealogy in Luke, not at the beginning of the story, but in connection with the descent of the Holy Spirit at the baptism of the Lord. See Matthew's Gospel, J. Worcester, pages 5-31.

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