John the Baptist

by F. B. Meyer

This is the secret of making the best of your life. Discover what you can do best—the one thing which you are called to do for others, and which probably no one else can do so well. Set yourself to do this, devolving on voluntary or paid helpers all that they can do as well as, and perhaps better than, yourself. It was in this spirit that the apostles said, "It is not fit that we should forsake the Word of God and serve tables. Look ye out, therefore, men … whom we may appoint over this business; but we will continue steadfastly in prayer, and in the ministry of the Word."

It is specially the temptation of Eastern life, where the climate is enervating and service is cheap and plentiful, to seek the soft raiment and the large assistance of attendants, and it is almost impossible to yield to one or the other without relaxing the fibre of the soul. The temptation is always around us; and it is well to look carefully into our life from time to time, to be quite sure, lest almost insensibly its strong energetic spirit may not be in process of deterioration—as the soldiers of Hannibal in the plains of Capua. If so, resolve to do without, not for merit's sake, but to conserve the strength and simplicity of your soul.

(3) His noble office. "But wherefore went ye out?—to see a prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and much more than a prophet." Nothing is more difficult than to measure men while they are living. Whilst the fascination of their presence and the music of their voice are in the air, we are apt to exaggerate their worth. The mountain towers so far above us that we are apt, in the absence of other mountains, or in our too great proximity to it, to think of it as the greatest of all the mountain-range. But it is not so, as we discover when we remove further. But subsequent ages, so far from correcting, have only confirmed our Saviour's estimate of his Forerunner. We are able to locate him in the Divine economy. He was a prophet, yes, and much more. To employ the predictive words of Malachi, he was Jehovah's messenger, the courier who announced the advent of the King, the last of the prophets—for all the prophets and the law prophesied until John—and the herald of that new and greater era, whose gates he opened, but into which he was not permitted to enter.

But our Lord went further, and did not hesitate to class John with the greatest of those born of woman. He was absolutely in the front rank. He may have had peers, but no superiors; equals, but no over-lords. Who may be classed with him, we cannot, dare not, say. But probably Abraham, Moses, Paul. "There hath not arisen a greater than John the Baptist." No brighter star shines in the celestial firmament than that of this brief young life, which had only time enough to proclaim the advent of the Lord, and after some brief six months of ministry by the Jordan, followed by twelve months in the gaol, waned here to shine in undimming brilliancy yonder.

There was a further tribute paid by our Lord to his noble servant. Some two or three centuries before, Malachi had foretold that Elijah, the prophet, would be sent before the great and terrible day of the Lord came; and the Jews were always on the outlook for his coming. Even to the present day a chair is set for him at their religious feasts. This is what was meant when they asked the Baptist, at the commencement of his ministry, if he were Elijah. He shrank, as we have seen, from assuming so great a name, though he could not have refused the challenge, had it been worded to include the spirit and power of the great prophet of Thisbe. But here our Lord went beyond John's own modest, self-depreciating estimate, and declared, "If ye are willing to receive it, this is Elijah which is to come." As He descended from the Mount of Transfiguration, He returned to the same subject: "And they asked Him, saying, The scribes say that Elijah must first come. And He said unto them, Elijah indeed cometh first, and restoreth all things…. But I say unto you that Elijah is come, and they have also done unto him whatsoever they listed, even as it is written of him" (Mark ix. 9-13).

III. THE MASTER'S RESERVATION. Let us again quote His memorable words: "Among them that are born of women there hath not arisen a greater than John the Baptist; yet he that is but little in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than he" (Matt. xi. 11, R.V.).

The greatness of John the Baptist shone out in conspicuous beauty in his meek confession of inferiority. It is always a sign of the greatest knowledge, when its possessor confesses himself to be as a child picking up shells on the shores of a boundless ocean. And the Baptist's greatness was revealed in the lowliness of his self-estimate.

When the Lord Jesus summarized his own character He said, "I am meek and lowly in heart." In doing so He expressed the character of God; for He was the Revealer of God, "the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person." He was "God manifested in flesh." He was not only the Son of God, He was God the Son: "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. I and the Father are one." The greatness of John was proved in this, that like his Lord he was meek and lowly in heart. Neither before nor since has a son of Adam lived in whom these divine qualities were more evident. No sublimer, no more God-like utterance ever passed the lips of man than John's answer to his disciples: "A man can receive nothing except it have been given him from heaven. He must increase, but I must decrease" (see the whole passage, John iii. 27-36). The very same spirit of meekness was speaking in John as acted in his Lord, when, knowing that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (though Jesus Himself baptized not, but his disciples), "He left Judea and departed into Galilee." What divisions might have been avoided in the Church had his people followed his example! But there was no man, not even the apostle John or Paul, whose spirit accorded more exactly with the Master's than his faithful and self-effacing herald and forerunner, John the Baptist. It might well be said, that of them that were born of women there had not arisen a greater than he.

But what was in our Lord's thought when He made the reservation, "Yet he that is but little in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than he"? It has been suggested that the Lord was speaking of John not only as a man, but as a prophet, and that this declaration applies more particularly to John as a prophet. The words of the evangelist Luke are noticeable—"There hath not risen a greater prophet than John the Baptist": because to balance the sentence it seems needful to supply the word prophet in the second clause—"The least prophet in the Kingdom of heaven is a greater prophet than he." John could say, "Behold the Lamb of God"; but the least of those who, being scattered abroad, went everywhere proclaiming the word of the Kingdom, preached "Jesus and the resurrection."

But there is another way of interpreting Christ's words. John ushered in the Kingdom, but was not in it. He proclaimed a condition of blessedness in which he was not permitted to have a part. And the Lord says that to be in that Kingdom gives the opportunity of attaining to a greatness which the great souls outside its precincts cannot lay claim to. There is a greatness which comes from nature, and another greatness from circumstances. The child on the mountain is higher than the giant in the valley. The boy in our village schools knows more on certain subjects than Socrates or Confucius, the greatest sages of the world. The least instructed in the Kingdom of heaven is privileged to see and hear the things which prophets and kings longed and waited for in vain. The least in the higher dispensation may know and understand more than the loftiest souls of the dispensations that have preceded.