While the ministry of John the Baptist may not seem like it is important eschatologically, it contributes much to our understanding and to world history. First, his coming begins the cataclysmic and seismic shift from the old world of Judaism to the new world of the Kingdom of God. His coming signaled the end of the Old Covenant order and heralded the beginning of the Kingdom of God. What a monumental life and role that the Lord allowed this humble servant to have.

Hurry Up and Wait
It’s a rare occasion when only four words can summarize a major chapter of your life or the organization to which you belonged. But, “hurry up and wait” certainly fits that bill. From my earliest moments of hurrying up to wait at MEPS (Military Entrance Processing Station); to the chaotic screams of drill sergeants prodding us urgently off busses, leaving us standing there for hours in an empty parking lot, leaving us wondering what was going to happen next and when would we get new orders; to the meticulous packing and shipping of all of our gear, thousands of miles away to Iraq, so we could sit in empty bedrooms waiting for the orders to come down. The military is a hurry up and wait kind of place.
Perhaps, this is how John the baptist felt as he was sitting in prison, soon to be executed. The LORD had called him to preach fiery, desperate, sermons to the apostate Jewish nation. Like the prophets of old, the Spirit of God had stirred up incendiary words within the vagabond prophet’s mouth, which did not make him any friends, but did bring him plenty of foes. To John, the warnings God told him to declare felt grave, pressing, and imminently dire and he certainly was urgent in speaking them. But now, sitting in a dank Jewish prison, John must have wondered when were all of these cascading judgments to come about.
Think about it this way. John was like a traveling geologist who was sent to warn a small mountain village of coming destruction. He had noticed that the rock structures above were unstable and that a deadly rockslide would soon destroy the town. So, he entered the city urgently, warning them, “flee from the disaster that is to come”, but few would listen to him. In fact, they became so annoyed by him, that they arrested him and threw him into the local prison. To add insult to injury, they viciously mocked the poor man, discrediting his “expert” opinion, leaving him to rot in the dampened cell alone. Before long they executed the man, believing his quackery had been disproven, as the city was lulled into a false sense of security and hope. For just a few months later, the deadly landslide consumed them all and there wasn’t a single survivor. This was the kind of ministry John the Baptist was called to. He was called to hurry up and wait.
John and the Prophet of Doom
As we learned last week, Malachi is often called the prophet of doom because of the calamitous prophecy he proclaimed against the belligerent people of God. He warned them that God was going to send a sudden devastation by fire that would overtake the nation (Malachi 3:3). This fire, according to Malachi, would coincide with the appearance of YHWH’s messenger, whom Malachi called “Elijah” (Malachi 3:1). That coming messenger, Jesus tells us, was none other than John the Baptist (Matthew 11:14). This means that John the Baptist would not only prepare the way for the Lord, who would save His people from their sins, but would also warn the rebels of the awful judgment that Christ was going to bring against them. John’s appearing as end-time prophet coincides with Malachi’s imminent eschatological judgment against the Jews.
Why is this so important? Because we tend to think of John the Baptist as Jesus’ eccentric first cousin, who shows up eating grasshoppers, dressed in camel skinned robes, with the role of introducing Jesus to the world. That is kind of true, but it misses the entire theme of imminent judgment that is so carefully woven into the narrative. When John steps onto the scene in Judea, his goal is to warn the people that the Christ has come. For those who repent, they will be saved. For those who resist, they will experience a kind of hell on earth.
John and the End of Apostate Judah
While we don’t have a panoply of quotations from John, we have more than enough information to validate what Malachi says about him, that he is the prophet who will precede imminent judgment. For instance, his father Zechariah (through the Holy Spirit) fully anticipated his boy would grow up to become “the messenger” of destruction foretold by Malachi (Luke 1:76-79). John, himself, believed he was the forerunner of the light-bearing Christ (Malachi 4:2; John 1:6-8, 23), who would bring healing to some and disaster unto others.
We know this was John’s focus, because the tone of his ministry is all about repentance (Luke 3:3; Matthew 3:1).
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Written by B.C. Newton |
Tuesday, September 13, 2022
Jesus is unveiling a deeper understanding of the Christ for all who have eyes to see. He is revealing that the Christ will not a great but ultimately lesser imitation of David, as if David’s reign was the very pinnacle for God’s people. No, the coming Son of David would be so great that even His great and Holy Spirit-led ancestor David bowed before Him and called Him Lord. 

And as Jesus taught in the temple, he said, “How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared,
“‘The Lord said to my Lord,“Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.”’
David himself calls him Lord. So how is he his son?” And the great throng heard him gladly.
And in his teaching he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widows’ houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”
And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny. And he called his disciples to him and said to them, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”Mark 12:35-44 ESV

While the early church began to grow and thrive in Jerusalem following Pentecost, it certainly was met with many challenges. Perhaps the most pervasive challenge was the opposition of the religious leaders. Just as Jesus warned, they hated the apostles with the same beastly vitriol that they had aimed at Christ. In Acts 5, the high priest and the Sadducees arrested the apostles and brought them before the Sanhedrin to give an account as to why they continued to preach about Jesus. Peter answered:
We must obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.VV. 29-32
As this answer, the members of the council were ready to kill the apostles, but a Pharisee on the council named Gamaliel gave a word of caution. He recounted for them two would-be Messiahs who gathered a large number of followers but were killed and their followers dispersed. His advice was then:
So in the present case I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone, for if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!”VV. 38-39
After being beaten, the apostles were released and rejoiced “that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name” (v. 41). Indeed, rather than silencing Jesus’ disciples, the threats of the rulers only caused them to proclaim Christ all the more boldly. Over the next several decades, the words of Gamaliel proved true. The Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes tried to crucify the news of Jesus’ resurrection just like they once crucified Him, yet they could not suppress the work of God. For all their schemes, they were placed under Christ’s feet as His steadily built His church by the power of His Spirit as He sat enthroned at the right hand of the Father.
A Question for the Questioners: Verses 35–37
Now that we have read Christ’s responses to four questions from the religious leaders (three being hostile and one sincere), the conclusion of chapter twelve gives us three distinct passages that build upon one another and upon everything that has come before. In this first passage (verses 35-37), Jesus goes on the offensive by presenting His own question. We are not told that Jesus directed this question toward a particular group, whether the scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, etc. Instead, the text simply read, “And as Jesus taught in the temple…” Thus, this seems to be a generally proposed question, yet given the business of the religious leaders in the temple, I think we can still rightly read the point of this question being aimed at them.
Here is Jesus’ question:
How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared,
‘The Lord said to my Lord,“Sit at my right hand,until I put your enemies under your feet.”‘
David himself calls him Lord. So how is he his son?
The main premise of this question centers upon the understanding of the Christ (or Messiah) being the son or descendent of David. The root of this belief is 2 Samuel 7:12-16, where God promised a son with an eternal throne to come from David. And that great promise is reiterated in various ways throughout the Scriptures (Psalm 132 being one of the most explicit). Thus, the scribes as students and teachers of God’s law were correct in this belief that the Christ would be the son of David. And let us remember that even Bartimaeus had received some teaching of this great hope.
Thus, Jesus is in no way denying that He is descendent of David; instead, His question revealed new depths that their understanding had failed to see. To probe these depths, Jesus cited Psalm 110:1, where David speaks of two persons, both called Lord. In the Old Testament, we find that the two ‘Lords’ look a bit different with the first being entirely capitalized and the second having only the first letter capitalized. This is to reflect that two different words are used in Hebrew. The first LORD is Yahweh, the holy and personal name of God, that is often translated as LORD because it was a common practice for later Jews to say Adonai (Lord) when reading instead of Yahweh. Thus, the first person, the first Lord, is Yahweh Himself, the Maker of heaven and earth. The second Lord is Adonai in Hebrew. R. C. Sproul notes that:
In most cases in the Old Testament, Adonai is the supreme title of Yahweh. It means “the One who is absolutely Sovereign.” This is why we sometimes find the words LORD and Lord back-to-back in Scripture. For example, in Psalm 8 we read, “O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth” (v. 1a). This text literally reads, “O Yahweh, our Adonai.” It is saying, “O Yahweh, our Sovereign One, how excellent is your name.”[1]
Thus, Psalm 110 reads, “Yahweh says to my Adonai…” Thus, we have David, Israel’s greatest king, not only submitting to Yahweh but also to another person, an even greater sovereign. Who such a person be, except the coming Messiah? Thus, we have Jesus’ question: how could David’s son also be David’s Lord?
The question goes unanswered, in some ways, because it was not meant to be answered. Jesus is not inviting a theological debate here. That is not the goal of His question. Instead, Jesus is unveiling a deeper understanding of the Christ for all who have eyes to see. He is revealing that the Christ will not a great but ultimately lesser imitation of David, as if David’s reign was the very pinnacle for God’s people. No, the coming Son of David would be so great that even His great and Holy Spirit-led ancestor David bowed before Him and called Him Lord. The Christ would not just be like David; He would be the greater David.
This, therefore, primarily (though subtly) served as a rebuke and warning to the religious leaders that sought to destroy Jesus. For if Jesus truly was the Christ, then they would be guilty of playing the role of Saul, seeking to destroy David in the wilderness. Saul was certainly allowed to humble David for a season, yet the LORD ultimately disposed of him and exalted David in his place. In the same way, the religious leaders would be allowed to war against Christ for a season and even to kill Him, yet He would ultimately rise again and ascend to the right hand of the Father to rule as His enemies are placed under His feet.
Thus, this question is Jesus warning the religious leaders that their opposition toward Him is an opposition to God. It was a promise that they could not ultimately destroy Him and, in attempting to do so, would be destroyed themselves.
But even while no one dared answer or question Jesus anymore, “the great throng heard him gladly.” Matthew Henry rightly notes however:
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Let us never forget key lessons we should have already learnt: to vacate solid granite of Scripture for shifting sands of feelings, impressions, hunches, emotions, sense, reason, circumstances, providences and signs, always results in a knot that is only untangled by grace.

We are called to walk by faith, through which we are also justified. Far too often, believers including mature saints, even in top ecclesiastical posts, seek to further God’s work by resorting to the flesh.
DIY salvation (adversely reviewed) is one of the main points of Genesis 16 – here the holy family, with Abram included and implicated, without jeopardizing his saved status, faithlessly and pragmatically, tosses a carnal spanner in God’s Work.
A catastrophic lapse led to a failed attempt to give the LORD a helping hand in hurrying His world-blessing plan along: with no heir in sight, and beyond all human hope, Sarai’s servant-surrogate Hagar, whom providence put within reach, offered an open door to sire, and adopt, an illicit to-be-son.
Certainly, we can sense the frustration of his wife whose womb Yahweh had shut, with perhaps a hint of blame? It was 10 years down the line from the night God launched His plan in Ur – impatience, sense, reason and sight gave the patriarch a nudge &, with echoes of Eden, Abram listened to his wife.
But, it really does matter how the plan of God moves forward – the Angel of the LORD, with his first appearance on-stage, indicates clearly that the One who sees all & knows the fact-file of our lives, is as interested both in the way of what we do as the what of Jehovah’s work.
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