JOHN THE BAPTIST'S COURSE
D.L.Stewart
This is the fifth time in the New Testament that the record is given of John's appreciation of Christ expressed in this way. It was as John was fulfilling his course. What a course was John's! Perhaps a few months of service, but the Lord Himself speaks of him as a burning and shining lamp. His course, his mission in life, his one objective, was to make way for Christ. We should each be challenged as to whether we are here with some sense of mission. Then as to our course locally, or otherwise, these months or years - has it been to make way for Christ? There was nothing whatever personal in John's outlook.
Isaiah spoke of John's mission and service in chapter 40, saying "every mountain and hill shall be brought low" (v 4). I used to think that it was brought down, but that is not exactly the thought. Brought low is to become available to make a way for Him who Himself is meek and lowly in heart. It is not just the mountains that are the obstacles but hills and perhaps little hills, which would have a bearing on us all. Then "the crooked shall be made straight". How essential these things are if the Lord is truly to have His way among us; and this has its application to us all, especially in our localities.
John is in the sense of One he speaks of as mightier and yet here in the footsteps of service. The sandal is not the luxurious shoe, according to the note in Matthew; it is the footwear of a servant, but what a servant! John with an appreciation of who was there is bowed in the light of the stoop which that sandal involved. There must be something in the fact that each of the gospel writers mentions as to John and the Lord's sandal. Mark, who has only a few verses on John the baptist but whose gospel bears peculiarly on service speaks of the "mightier than I... the thong of whose, sandal I am not fit to stoop down and unloose".
What an impression this must have made on Paul perhaps laying the basis in his soul for such a service as his was to be. Acts 13 is his first recorded public ministry and as he introduces Christ into his word he bases what he has to say on John's impression of the Saviour Jesus. How much depended on John's ministry, his course, so short as to time but so full of nothing but Christ! In Acts 1 the filling up of the twelve required one who was present in John's time as qualification for witness, and in Acts 19 the work at Ephesus culminating in the height of Paul's ministry had its moral beginning with John. So Paul or rather "Saul, who also is Paul" in this very chapter from which we read (v 9) accepts the being brought low in view of way being made for Christ in his service and in testimony.
How true it is that the testimony is Christ, and if John in his course was preparing the way of the Lord and preaching the bringing low of every obstacle he himself leads so well on this line. Almost his last words according to John's gospel are "He must increase and I must decrease", chap 3: 30. May we all in our own course be found somewhat on this line.
Substance of a word in
LONDON
1 February 1983