Preparing For The King (part 1)

For he will be great before the Lord.  And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb. – Luke 1:15  (ESV)

This verse, which of course must be heard within and according to the entire narrative and purpose of the author’s work, which is the presentation of a true global ruler, speaks of the man that we know as John the Baptist.  Immediately after declaring that “the Baptizer” will be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb, the writer goes on to say that “he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God” (1:16).  Because of what is said by this early Jesus-believer in the course of his writing, reflecting the belief of the early church when it comes to the role of the Holy Spirit in the world, we can quickly make the connection that it is not strictly John the Baptist that will be doing this turning through his ministry, as important and crucial for laying the groundwork for Jesus (and most likely influencing Jesus) that his ministry would be. 

What is not to be missed is that, though he will be the vessel that the Creator God of Israel uses of course, it would be that God, through the Holy Spirit, turning many to Himself, the Lord their God.  We go on to read that “he will go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah” (1:17a), and that he will also serve to “turn the hearts of the fathers to the children” (1:17b).  Most importantly, however, we find it said that he will be turning, through the Holy Spirit at work in him to bring this about, “the disobedient to the wisdom of the just” (1:17c).

We can find this to be a most compelling statement, especially as we reflect on those words “wisdom” and “just”.  Here, one can’t help taking the liberty of doing a bit of justifiable though relatively free word substitution, and re-reading that phrase to find John turning “the disobedient to the Christ of God the Father.”  That is a safe substitution, in light of the fact that we know that our God is indeed just, and that the Apostle Paul refers to Jesus the Christ as the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24). 

Now, do we make these substitutions for no reason?  Of course not.  We do so in order for the purpose of better understanding what is being communicated through the Scripture.  Here, we are simply pointing out that part of John the Baptist’s ministry was to prepare a people currently in a state of the curse of exile (though in their land, they were ruled by a foreign power), and who would have thus, according to their self-understanding and the narrative by which they defined themselves, understood themselves to be a disobedient people.  John was preparing a people to be turned to Jesus and to His message about Himself.  That’s not much of a stretch of logic, as we find John offering up his purpose statement throughout the Gospels, saying that he was there to “Prepare the way of the Lord,” and to “make His paths straight” (Luke 3:4). 

These things that were being said about John here in the first chapter of Luke were being said by Gabriel, an angel of the Lord.  When John says that he was preparing the way of the Lord, he is hearkening back to what the readers (hearer) is informed was told to his father, Zechariah, by Gabriel.  Undoubtedly, the reader is to presume that these words had been passed on to John as a young man, and that John would naturally have reflected on them throughout his life.  So when John speaks about his ministry of preparation, he is referring to the fact that it was said by the angel that he would be used “to make ready for the Lord a people prepared” (1:17d).  This begs the question as to what the people were being prepared to do.  The answer is that they were being prepared to receive their king.  With that, we have to understand that God’s people were in constant expectation of their messiah, their king in the line of David, though there was certainly internal disagreement as to the type of messiah they were expecting.  It is along these lines that we think of the turning of “the disobedient to the Christ (the Messiah-anointed one) of God the Father.”