Locusts and Wild Honey
The intake of locusts and wild honey was not a throwaway detail. The food going into John’s mouth represented the message coming out of John’s mouth. Those who received John’s message with faith would taste its sweetness and experience God’s blessing, like honey. Those who refused John’s message would experience God’s judgment, like locusts.
John the Baptist preached in the wilderness and called for people to repent, and those who repented he baptized in the Jordan River (Matt. 3:1-2, 5-6).
So John was a preacher and a baptizer. Aside from these roles, John also dressed and ate in a certain way. It’s good practice for interpreters to notice unexpected details and to ask, “Why is that there? Is there any significance I should see?”
In Matthew 3:4, we’re told: “Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.” The first part of the verse is about his dress, and the second part is about his diet.
The “garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt” is an allusion to the prophet Elijah. In 2 Kings 1:8, Elijah “wore a garment of hair, with a belt of leather about his waist.” The description of this garment and belt connects Elijah with John the Baptist, for John was the Elijah who was to come (see Mal. 4:5-6; Matt. 11:13-14).
Isn’t it intriguing, though, that we’re also informed about John’s diet? He ate locusts and wild honey. If the first part of Matthew 3:4 was an Old Testament allusion, could the same thing be true of the second part?
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Why Does Jesus Say No One Is Good but God Alone?
Written by A.W. Workman |
Sunday, August 4, 2024
When Jesus says, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone,” he is really saying that he is indeed good, and therefore he is God. The rich young ruler, merely intending to be respectful, was speaking more truly than he knew. His standard of goodness was woefully insufficient, as proved by his assessment of his own life. But God allowed him to address Jesus in a way that was utterly and ironically spot on. Jesus is a good teacher; in fact, the only good teacher.“But Jesus himself says he is not God!” In Mark 10 and Luke 18, he says, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.’”
This is one of the more common arguments from the Bible that Muslims will try to use to disprove the divinity of Jesus. Not too long ago, a Muslim commenter on this blog said this very thing. If you spend any time at all doing evangelism with Muslims you are bound to hear this claim. So, how should a Christian respond?
I actually like it when my Muslim friends bring up this passage. This is because instead of Jesus denying his divinity here, I think there’s a case to be made that this passage is an example of the direct opposite – of Jesus in fact claiming to be God.
First, the context. Jesus is here responding to the rich young ruler who asks him what he must do to inherit eternal life. But this young man has begun his question by addressing Jesus as, “Good Teacher.” So, Jesus’ response to him is in two parts. First, he calls into question the way in which he addressed him. Then, he goes on to answer what is required for this man to inherit eternal life. Those of us familiar with this passage know that the young man goes on to claim that he’s kept all of the commandments that Jesus draws out of him. But then, when Jesus tells him to sell everything that he has, to give the funds to the poor, and to follow him, the young man goes away sad because he cannot bring himself to part with his wealth. You can read the passage for yourself here and here.
When I’m talking with my Central Asian friends about this, I will often respond first by saying. “Well, what’s going on here is that Jesus is a good teacher, and you of all people should know that the best teachers teach not only direct lessons, but also indirect lessons.”
Usually, this response is met with some level of furrowed brows. So, I’ll go on to explain.
“Here, in Central Asia, you use indirect communication all the time. In little things like saying yes to an offer of tea, you actually don’t say ‘Yes.’ Instead, you say, ‘No,’ then, ‘Don’t trouble yourself.’ Even more, you greatly value the ability of indirect communication to teach profound lessons. So, you should be able to appreciate when Jesus is using indirect communication to make a point – and not all of a sudden become like Westerners who insist something be communicated simply and directly in order to be understood.”
Here, I might remind them of a folk story of their people where a father has seven sons who are always fighting. Fed up, one day he lines his sons up and hands six of them a single stick. Then, one by one, he commands them to break the stick. Each of the six sons breaks his stick easily. But on the seventh son, the father hands him the bundle of broken sticks and commands him to break them.
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Kintsugi: Creating Beauty from Brokenness
As we live in this fallen world, we are surrounded by brokenness. We experience brokenness in our own lives too. Jars of clay can crack and break easily. Yet Psalm 147:3 tells us that the Lord “heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds”. God is like the master kintsugi artist. When we are broken, he doesn’t toss us aside or get rid of us. Rather, he is close to us and saves us (Psalm 34:16). In his grace he puts the broken pieces back together, and in that process, creates something even more beautiful.
He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. Psalm 147:3
The other day I broke my favourite mug. It was a gift from a friend a few years ago. Not only was it a reminder of both the friendship and of Scotland, but it was also the perfect size for my daily mug of coffee. I feel both sad and annoyed with myself for not having been more careful. Right now it is still sitting on my shelf because I can’t quite bring myself to throw it out!
Most Japanese bowls and cups are earthenware, made from clay. A Japanese meal will usually comprise several different items, each in their own bowl or small plate. So a typical household in Japan will have a plethora of small bowls and dishes.
The earthquake and tsunami of 2011 destroyed many houses and their contents, including a large amount of earthenware dishes. One Christian lady was helping to clear out a park in that area and began saving some of the many pieces of broken pottery. She wondered if she could make something beautiful out of all of the devastation around.
The next year she started to gather a group of women to make accessories out of the broken pottery. Some professionals then came to teach them how to make jewellery and the women started to make beautiful necklaces, earrings and other items and sell them worldwide. The Nozomi Project was born (Nozomi means “hope” in Japanese). Not only were the women able to make beautiful accessories out of the broken pottery, but they were also able to earn money doing so, when so many sources of employment in that area had been destroyed.
There is another Japanese way of bringing beauty out of brokenness – the art of ‘kintsugi’. Rather than throwing away a broken plate or bowl, the pieces of pottery are put back together with gold lacquer. In some ways it might seem a strange thing to do – the repair with gold usually costs more than the original item. Also, rather than conceal the break, the lacquer accentuates it.
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We Can’t Think or Live Christianly
Written by T. M. Suffield |
Friday, July 26, 2024
Most of the Christian life is about the quiet ordinariness of your domestic life. Your Christian duty is to love your spouse if you’re married, to raise your children in the faith if you’re a parent, to be a good friend and neighbour, to look after the poor, and to see the kingdom of God invade your locality. Most of this ‘whole life’ discipleship is ordinary. It’s not exciting. It’s a walk forwards into a new way of living, but it’s also very mundane.What does our discipleship crisis look like? Our lives look the same as our neighbours and they shouldn’t. We don’t all have to be radical, but we do need a small number of radicals among us to help us see that our lives could be different.
I do think ordinary faithfulness is the goal for most, even then our lives should still be recognisably different to our peers. When I first moved away from home to University, I was struck by the radical nature of the faith I met. I hadn’t encountered this before.
Other students were aware that their faith was their life: I remember spontaneous all night prayer sessions, evangelising on campus, long conversations about the Bible (that were probably more heat than light, honestly). A lot of that was youthful enthusiasm and it is good and right for it to be tempered as life moves into a more typical rhythm.
Yet, the adults I knew were radical too. Most of the families in the church didn’t have a TV. They gave their lives to Jesus and raised their children into the faith in ways that caught me as a fresh-eyed older teenager.
I’m not sure that not having a TV is the thing we all need to do, I feel no impulse to get rid of mine—though Rhys Laverty’s recent description of giving up the TV for the sake of their kids and the transformative effect it’s had on their children is inspiring—but I don’t encounter many people who don’t have one at all. People are shocked we don’t pay for a streaming service (which is about cost rather than ideology, we watch plenty) and we watch plenty of TV. It feels like the bar has shifted.
I’m not sure this example is a universal one. I suspect those families were being deeply counter-cultural in the early 00s. I was impacted by this example because it was shocking. Yet as culture has pulled in entirely the opposite direction, you’d think we’d see more pulling against the tide. If we turned to what should be an easy one, not giving smartphones to children, you’d hope Christians were there but we’re not.
Even if you disagree with my opinion on that, I can’t think of a common against the culture stand that we do see amongst Christians in terms of what we do with our lives. We sometimes talk a good talk but when it comes down to it, we don’t live differently.
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