John 1:19-23

¹⁹Now this was John's testimony when the Jews of Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. ²⁰He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, "I am not the Christ." ²¹They asked him, "Then who are you? Are you Elijah?" He said, "I am not." "Are you the Prophet?" He answered, "No." ²²Finally they said, "Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?" ²³John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, "I am the voice of one calling in the desert, 'Make straight the way for the Lord.' "

Who is John? The voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’ John’s ministry kicks off, and he draws lots of people to hear him and repent and be baptized. This is a genuine spiritual revival, and the Jewish religious leadership was concerned. One of the roles of the Sanhedrin was to deter false teaching and maintain order among the multitude of teachers and preachers that would spring up during the 400-500 years of inter-testimental history. The leadership asks John, “Who are you?” And they must have had it in the back of their minds that he could have been the Messiah. That’s how influential his ministry was. But our text says that John had no trouble confessing that he was not the Messiah. Who then was he?

God says about John the Baptist in Malachi 3:1, “See, I will send My messenger, who will prepare the way before Me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to His temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come.” And in Malachi 4:5, “See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes.” So here the Jewish leadership asks if he is Elijah. Calvin explains that “the question is founded on a false opinion which they had long held; for, holding the opinion that the soul of a man departs out of one body into another, when Malachi announced that Elijah would be sent, they imagined that the same Elijah was to come. It is therefore a just and true reply which John makes, that he is not Elijah; for he speaks according to the opinion which they attached to the words; but Christ, giving the true interpretation of the Prophet, affirms that John is Elijah (Matthew 11:14; Mark 9:13).” Luke 1:17 records the angel telling Zechariah that John “will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous – to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” So they expected the same Elijah. John knew he was not what they expected. Jesus affirms that he was in the spirit of Elijah. The Jewish leadership then wonders if John is the Prophet (Deuteronomy 18:15-22). This is not merely a prophet, but The Prophet signifying the end times, the Day of the Lord. Only Jesus could fulfill this description (Acts 3:22, Acts 7:37), and John rightly answers that he is not The Prophet. Jesus calls John the Baptist a prophet, and even adds that he is more than a prophet (Matthew 11:9).

Instead John says, “I am the voice of one calling in the desert, or the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’” This quote is from Isaiah 40:3, but the whole of chapter 40 is probably in view. Just listen to the first part, Isaiah 40:1-8, which reads like this: “Comfort, comfort My people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins. A voice of one calling: ‘In the desert prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. And the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it. For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.’ A voice says, ‘Cry out.’ And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’ ‘All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the LORD blows on them. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of our God stands forever.’” It’s about God’s Israel returning from exile.

A couple things here: John is “in the desert” or “in the wilderness.” This is critical. It’s not that he’s literally outside the city limits and in the wilderness of the region, though that is true. Rather, John is in the spiritual wilderness, the spiritual desert. Just as the Isaiah passage says, the people of God have been rescued from exile in Babylon and slavery in Egypt; their “hard service has been completed,” and Israel is on her way to the Promised Land. What comes upon leaving exile or departing Egypt? The wilderness, the desert. And so Jesus comes to the people of Israel where they are – in the desert, in the wilderness. God’s promises to deliver them from physical slavery had come true. Now was the time for deliverance from spiritual slavery as well. (Jesus will talk to the leaders about their slavery to sin in John 8.) And there’s even more in this loaded phrase. God is in the process of restoring creation. It was originally the Garden of Eden. And sin corrupted it; creation was subjected to frustration, and it became wilderness and desert. The Incarnation of Jesus Christ, and the beginning of His ministry, is a critical stage in this process of restoration and renewal. John writes about that here, and he will write about the completion of that in Revelation.