JOHN061 - What Did John's Baptism Festival Look and Feel Like?

John 1:29-34

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Music by Jeff Foote

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Did y'all ever go to camps or music festivals or anything like that when you were a kid, or maybe in adulthood, maybe you went as a sponsor, maybe it's like going to music festivals as an adult. If you did, here's one of the all-time truisms about such events. You can't explain the magic of it when you come home. Every time I go to camp as a kid, the story was the exact same. I really didn't want to go very bad. I didn't want to be here. I felt weird when I showed up, but I didn't know anybody didn't like the people in my room. I didn't think I was gonna fit in. Started to get a little more fun. They got a crush on a girl or something. She ended up not liking me, but it was fun anyway. And I got some friends, and then we it got to the last day, and we all cried because we were all gonna miss each other, and I can't wait to come back next year. Or I'd get home from camp. I'd try to explain. But whenever we got done with that conversation, it just felt kind of hollow. You just had to kind of be there, and it doesn't feel as rad when I explain it after the fact. Same thing with music festivals. We used to go to one in particular called Cornerstone. I think it's defunct now, but it was a big woodstock, kind of sloppy, muddy mess, but at least ostensibly Christian. They did it in Illinois. It was fun every year. I mean, I didn't feel like I totally fit in there either, but when I come back, I try to explain to people why it was cool. It was very hard for me to explain the energy and the fun and the people I met and all the great things that came out of it. Likewise, in this scene in the middle of John chapter one, where John is out baptizing people, you're out here in the middle of nowhere. I guess people were just camping. It has kind of a probably a festival vibe out here. So in the middle of all of that, something truly amazing and historic happens. And it seems to me as I read this passage that I'm about to read to you, that John the evangelist, the author of this book, knew it was futile to try to set the scene and make you feel like you were there when the Baptist was out baptizing at Bethany Beyond the Jordan. He could try to explain it to us, but it just doesn't work when you try to explain music festivals and camp and things like this, where you just kind of had to be there. So John the Evangelist kind of hustles by this scene out here at Bethany Beyond the Jordan, but he gives us enough, plenty, really, to understand the theological significance, to understand the big thing or thing gz that happened out here. And then I think we can kind of cobble together what it might have felt like a little bit, which is what we're going to work on today. John 1, 28. This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan where John was baptizing. The next day, John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is the one I meant when I said, A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me. I myself didn't know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel. Then John gave this testimony. I wouldn't have known him except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, the man on whom you see the spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God.

unknown 3:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:37

I made it sound like none of the magic was really going to transfer. That was actually pretty good. I think the awesomeness of the moment comes through to an extent. But I still maintain this is a pretty quick handling of a very big deal event, not just for the culture in general, but for individuals. This was the ultimate go-to-camp moment. I think people there knew that something amazing was happening in their own lives, but that something bigger than them was happening. When I picture this scene, what I imagine is something that's maybe a bit familiar to us, if you've ever been to a music festival or a camp, the kind of thing where you go to a remote place that is outside your element, that's a little bit uncomfortable. And the idea is you're going to get tested, you're going to get pushed. Things aren't going to feel like they normally feel. You're not going to have your normal rhythms. And that's good. That's it's meant to kind of break you down a little bit and get you to think about the world in less predictable ways. That's kind of why camp works the way camp works. It's kind of why music festival feels a little bit magical because you can't live like that every day. But living like you do every day gets you in certain ruts and habits of mind. It makes you think that only certain ways and certain things are possible. And there's something really powerful about being kind of shaken out of that, tossed out into the woods to figure it out. So all these people come down and they're having a camp experience. They're having an ordeal that is the kind of experience where you go through something hard and come out the other side differently. Then, of course, the centerpiece event for each person who made their way out into the wilds in probably uncomfortable heat and in some inhospitable terrain, the pinnacle event was their own baptism, and the secondary pinnacle event was celebrating the baptism of others. So, what does that baptism look like? To put it succinctly, every linguistic hint in the Bible indicates that at this point, Christians baptize by dunking each other underwater. So I know that there's stained glass and there's depictions of this baptism happening with a little saucer and John the Baptist kind of sprinkling that on Jesus without calling out groups that baptism by you know sprinkling. A case can be made. We'll talk about that probably tomorrow. But Jesus was almost surely, given the language employed here in John and the other gospels, I mean, he was almost surely dipped under water. And I think there's powerful imagery in that that goes along with the feel that all these people would have had being out here in the wilds. You start baptism up above the water, and you're kind of nervous. You're in front of everybody. Some of you have been baptized by immersion. You know what this is like. I remember when I got baptized, my dad did it in church. I remember how I felt. I felt kind of singled out. I felt like I was in front of everybody, my heart was racing. I also had never had anybody with tenderness and care dip me awkwardly backwards under water where I can't really control like water getting in my nose and stuff. But I had been dunked by people who wanted to torture me a little bit, you know, bullies, friends, people roughhousing. Frankly, I was really nervous when I got baptized just about how well I would handle going into the water in such a vulnerable position. But that position is part of the symbolism, right? You get dipped back, like you're a body being laid into a grave, and then you get pulled back out. And the idea, I mean, there's multiple levels of the metaphor here. I mean, one is the one that I was just hinting at. It's you're dead in your sins when you're above the water, you die to those sins, and you're raised back to life in Christ. Another layer of metaphor and symbolism to the baptism is that it's kind of like you know, some of the imagery in the Old Testament about like, you know, filthy clothing that a priest has on at one point in the Old Testament. And by the power of God, it's like we got to get all that ugly clothing and we got to put the right clothes on. We got to robe this person in proper attire that is reflective of the holiness of God, and then this person will be fit to serve as a priest. And so it's kind of like that, like you're being washed and cleansed of sin and brought up without all of that sin on you, not because the water did it, but because it's symbolic of what God has done through Christ. And then again, the third kind of metaphor here, in addition to death and resurrection, in addition to being cleansed from sin, the third metaphor is the one I was hinting at at the beginning. It's the vulnerability, it is the dependence. You can't baptize yourself. There is no reflexive verb use for self-baptism here in the Bible. It's it's something that is given by God and carried out by other human hands. So there's dependence here, which I mean, hey, if you read through the Bible, the dependence on God is like uh it's a really central point in this whole thing. We don't save ourselves by our effort, our self-discipline, our perfect adherence to all the things. Ultimately, we're made right with God by the merciful work of God. Ultimately, our posture is right before the king when we're in a position of dependence, when we come like little children who are, you know, what are they great at? Well, trust and dependence. I remember what it was like when I got baptized. I don't want to cheapen it by using dumb words here, but it meant a lot to me. I felt stuff. It still means a lot to me when I think back to it. I remember what it was like the day I baptized all three of my kids, and not just how they felt and what they expressed to me at church that day, but I remember what I felt as the pastor, the shepherd of that congregation, and the father of my children, and vicariously seeing them go through that and understanding what it meant. That was very powerful. So you got all these people, they're camped out out here by the Hill of Elijah. It's kind of dusty and weird. Geographically, it's all centered by this little safe harbor on the muddy, bustling Jordan River, just inside that raging current on the east side of the river. If indeed we go with this Bethany beyond the Jordan location we talked about the other day, you're in clearer, cooler water, and you got people what all day long lined up to be baptized? How long does it take to baptize? I don't know exactly all the steps that John the Baptist is going through here. I don't know if John the Baptist had any help. We know later that he had disciples. Maybe the disciples of John the Baptist are talking with the people before they get baptized, and then just John does the actual baptizing. I assume there was a line the whole time. I assume there had to be food and stuff. I'm guessing some people brought tents, some people, you know, didn't have anything or just happened upon it. Maybe they're sleeping in other people's tents, maybe they're just crashed out. I would guess it looked like camp or a tent city at a music festival. I would guess it was not the most sanitary. And that that added to the imagery of the baptism when all that dust and ick and gross, if you've ever been to camp, if you've ever been to a music festival, you know what I'm talking about. It all comes off in that clear, spring-fed, cool, refreshing water in the middle of the desert and the mud and the ick and everything else. And then in the middle of all of this excitement, all of this individual transformation, all of this individual work of God in people's lives, which kind of looks like the hearts of the people of Israel turning back to God. Then all of a sudden, in the middle of that, we kind of got a rhythm to it, right? We've been doing this for days. All of a sudden, John the Baptist is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, right there. Look. And everybody's like, well, this is weird. We, I mean, we have a thing that we expect. You just keep baptizing people, you say certain words, you don't really break script or whatever, but now you're pointing at a guy with your haunting eyes and your haunting visage as a man who eats weird food and dresses weird. And like John the Baptist has been the center of attention the whole time. And all of a sudden, he's just pointing at some dude in the crowd. Like I kind of picture John the Baptist, like kind of hunching down a little bit, leaning forward, like craning his neck a little bit to be like, no, I'm not pointing at you. Uh-uh, not you. Right there. That guy, right there. He's doing it still. That's him. That's him, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. That is who I've been talking about. That is who all of this is about. Now, obviously, that was a lot of paraphrasing of the passage I read you earlier, but imagine the effectiveness of that moment. The guy, I mean, it almost looks like John the Baptist is gonna, you know, he could be some like kind of weird cult leader or like who knows, right? He could make this all about himself. He could do what so many others before him who had this kind of following had done and try to lead a rebellion or set himself up as king or some other forgettable, predictable nonsense. But in this moment it becomes crystal clear, uh-uh. No, this thing you guys are all doing, those of you who are in line to get in the water, those of you who are still wringing out your clothes because you just got baptized, this thing we're all doing, this is actually real. I said this was about something bigger than me and bigger than us, and it is, and by God's grace, we get to see it today, because that right there is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And we'll talk more about that tomorrow. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.