In January 2022, Feargal Lynn from Northern Ireland received an unusual letter. It bore no address! It simply had the first part of a postcode as well as a brief summary of his life story. The sender, not knowing Feargal’s address, wrote on the front of the envelope, ‘Feargal lives across the road from the Spar … his mother was Mary and his Da, Joseph … he plays the guitar and runs discos in the parochial hall. Friends with the fella who runs the butcher’s in Waterfoot.’ Amazingly, when the letter arrived in the Ballymena sorting office, Royal Mail worker Fergus McAlister knew exactly who the letter was for! It generated smiles all round and even made the national news! When two disciples of John the Baptist heard him say of Jesus, “Behold the Lamb of God!” they decided to follow him and asked, “Where dwellest Thou?” The earnest seeker is never turned away. The Lord replies, “Come and see.”
‘They said unto him, Rabbi … where dwellest thou?’ -
John the Baptist was a man of principle and he certainly wasn’t afraid to speak his mind. He even had the nerve to point the finger at the monarch, Herod the tetrarch, who had done many ‘evils’ and was guilty of adultery with Herodias, his brother’s wife. Because of his outspokenness, Herod ‘shut John up in prison’, where he would eventually die by beheading. The Lord Jesus asked the multitudes who were flocking to Him, their opinion of John Baptist, “What went ye out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken with the wind” The reed shaken by the wind bends one way, then another way. It’s never stable in the wind. John was no vacillating reed, whose words changed to suit the company he was in. How unlike Pontius Pilate, who, knowing Jesus was innocent, bends in ‘the wind’ of public pressure to ‘satisfy the crowd’, who, stirred up by the chief priests, cried out “Crucify him, crucify him”.
‘A reed shaken with the wind?’ -
The question above realises that there exists a problem between God and mankind.
The Bible states that this problem is SIN and it separates man from his Creator.
However, the Bible also reveals the solution to this dilemma. The apostle Paul wrote,
‘Therefore being JUSTIFIED BY FAITH, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ’ – Romans 5:1. Personal faith in the death and resurrection of Christ for
sinners, according to Paul, secures salvation. Nothing more is required. The Catholic
Church objects fiercely to this doctrine. The Council of Trent [1545 -
“How should man be just with God?” -
There has been much written about why Jesus asked to be baptised by John Baptist.
After all, it was a baptism in which people confessed their sins, and as the Scriptures
make clear, the Lord Jesus was sinless. Some have suggested that in His baptism,
Jesus was anticipating His own death. Later on in His teaching ministry, He spoke
of his death using the figure of baptism – “I have a baptism to be baptized with,
and how distressed I am till it is accomplished!” -
John Baptist said, “… are You coming to me?” -
The Pharisees had evil intentions towards Jesus. In their hatred for Him, they planned to entrap Him in the answers He gave to their loaded questions. One such question was, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” If He answered that it was right to pay taxes to Caesar, He would be siding with the Romans against Israel and He would be considered a traitor. If however, He said taxes should not be paid to Rome, He could be accused of being a rebel to the authority of Rome. He asked them to give Him a coin used to pay the tax (a Roman denarius, which bore image of Caesar). With the coin in His hand, He answered. “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” The very fact that Israel was occupied By Roman forces, indicated the nation had been unfaithful towards their God and had failed to give God His rightful dues!
Jesus said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” -
-
While in Caesarea, Paul had been told by Agabus the prophet (Acts 21:10), that he
was to be arrested in Jerusalem and handed over to the Romans. This pronouncement
caused the Christians to appeal to Paul, “Not to go up to Jerusalem.” This appeal
fell on deaf ears! In the following chapter, the Jewish crowds in Jerusalem seized
Paul and ‘sought to kill him’ but he was rescued by the Roman commander, who allowed
him to address the frenzied crowd. Paul related his blinding encounter with the risen
Christ on the road to Damascus and his subsequent meeting with the disciple Ananias,
who said, “And now why are you waiting? Arise and be baptized!” Many today, for whatever
reason, struggle with the truth of baptism. The waters have been muddied by the man-
“And now why are you waiting?” -