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What Makes You Greater Than King David?

Matthew 11:2–15

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the Person of Christ from Matthew 11:2–15


“When John heard in prison what Christ was doing, he sent his disciples to ask him, ‘Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?’ Jesus replied, ‘Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.’

As John’s disciples were leaving, Jesus began to speak to the crowd about John: ‘What did you go out into the desert to see? A reed swayed by the wind? If not, what did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, those who wear fine clothes are in kings’ palaces. Then what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written: “I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.”

I tell you the truth: Among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it. For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John. And if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come. He who has ears, let him hear.’ ”

This is the Word of the Lord.

Now you might well have thought I took leave of my senses in choosing this passage for the theme of mission and evangelism. What does this have to do with anything? But bear with me. I think you will see in due course how this stands at the heart of the gospel. Let me come in through the side door.

Have you ever gotten up in the morning a little wrinkly, stretched in front of the mirror, looked at yourself, and said, “I’m greater than King David”? Or alternatively, “Yes, I am greater than Solomon. I’m greater than Isaiah. I’m greater than Esther.” Have you ever said that? If you haven’t, you are unbiblical. Did you notice what we read in verse 11?

Jesus solemnly declares that John the Baptist is greater than all who came before him. Thus, in Jesus’ estimate, John is greater than Abraham. He is greater than King David. He is greater than Solomon. He is greater than Esther. He is greater than all who came before him. Now he adds, “And the least in the kingdom is greater than John.” Are you amongst the least of the kingdom?

If amongst the least of the kingdom you’re greater than John, and John is greater than all who came before him, are you not entitled, indeed mandated, by the Lord Jesus himself to think of yourself as, in some sense, greater than King David? Now I know that can be rapidly abused, and certainly one has to figure out what the axis of comparison is here.

No one is going to be accusing me of being greater than King David in a military sense. No one is going to accuse me of being greater than Solomon on the axis of wisdom. No one is going to accuse me of being a greater prophet than Isaiah. Nevertheless, the words are solid. Have you noticed how Jesus begins? “I tell you the truth.” “Listen up!” he said. In other words, this is something he holds of great importance.

What precisely is the axis of comparison about which Jesus is making this monumental claim with respect to the significance of his followers? Now to understand what he is saying and of its relevance to us, the easiest way to proceed, I think, is to follow the flow of the passage from verse 2 on, so we will sidle up to this passage when we see how the argument is developing. It may be useful to break up the passage into three parts.

1. Portrait of a discouraged baptist.

I am not speaking denominationally. “When John the Baptist heard in prison what Christ was doing …” Now the article is with that word. What the Christ was doing. What the Messiah was doing. Matthew usually refers to Jesus by his name. “What Jesus was doing.” Here Matthew gives him his messianic title, writing after the events when all things were clear.

“When John heard what the Messiah was doing …” Matthew wants his readers to know just who it is John the Baptist is about to start doubting. “When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent his disciples to ask him, ‘Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?’ ”

Now we should not avoid the obvious. John is having second thoughts. People have tried to duck that implication by saying, “Well, maybe it was merely a pedagogical device, a teaching trick. He knew, but he wanted the disciples to go and ask Jesus for themselves.” There’s no hint of that in the text. This is John the Baptist having second thoughts. The question is.… Why?

After all, there have been believers, both under the old covenant and under the new, who have suffered a great deal more than John did. At this juncture, he doesn’t know he’s about to lose his head in three more chapters, and he has enough freedom that his own disciples are able to come in and out of the prison in Machaerus to minister to his needs and send messages to the outside.

It’s not as if he’s being beaten and tortured. He’s just in jail, for goodness’ sake. That’s all that it is. So why is he collapsing? The only thing that enables us to understand is, first, what John himself preached and, second, how Jesus replies. Recall how John the Baptist preached regarding the Lord Jesus. You find a report back in chapter 3.

Amongst the things John the Baptist says.… Chapter 3, verse 11: “I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

In other words, John belonged to that species of those attending the coming of the Messiah who expected when the Messiah came to have a climactic bang at the end. It would be all over. The divisions would be there. Yet what do we find? Jesus is going around preaching nice sermons, healing people, feeding 5,000, attracting big crowds, having Bible conferences on mountainsides, and telling a lot of stories we call parables, with rising numbers of people following him.

Where’s the judgment? After all, it was John the Baptist who denounced the political leaders of his day for their immorality, and that got him into prison. Meanwhile, Jesus’ popularity is ascending, but where is this division that John the Baptist had himself announced? Yes, gathering the wheat into barns, but burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire. Where’s the judgment? “Are you the one who was to come, or should we look for another?”

Before we press on to see how Jesus’ response confirms that this is what is going on, it’s worth remembering in passing how often people have been hurt, crushed, and disappointed because their understanding of Scripture is poor, because they have made some sort of mistake on discerning what the Lord’s will is. It has happened even to very significant Christian leaders. For example, George Whitefield, the greatest preacher of the Evangelical Awakening or, as it’s called on this side of the Atlantic, the Great Awakening.

He was a man of enormous gift and unction as he preached the gospel and saw tens of thousands converted. Eventually he was married, and they had one little boy. Whitefield heard across the Atlantic that his son was ill. He prayed diligently, and he felt that he had received from the Lord assurance in his own soul that God would heal the boy; he would not die. And the boy died.

George Whitefield went into a six-month depression, but the reason he went into a six-month depression was not simply because of the bereavement but because of his disappointment with himself, with God, with events, because he had misunderstood, mis-grasped what he thought was God’s will. One is not a pastor very long before one stumbles across people like that.

It is desperately important for us to keep correcting our understanding of God and his ways by his own most Holy Word, so that when we do face hard times, which come to all of us sooner or later, we do not carry the extra burden of disappointment with God because of our misunderstanding.

We should not be too surprised that John the Baptist does not have this all put together. The apostles themselves did not have it put together at this juncture. After all, this is chapter 11. Five chapters on, Jesus will ask the Twelve, “Who do people say that I am?”

“Some this, some that.”

“What do you say?”

“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

“Well, Simon Peter, you’re blessed. Simon son of John, flesh and blood hasn’t revealed this to you but my Father who is in heaven. So let me go on to explain something a little more fully about this Messiah you’ve confessed.” Now he begins to unpack the impending nature of his death and resurrection. “The Messiah must go to Jerusalem and be betrayed by the elders and Pharisees and Sadducees, and he must suffer many things and be put to death by crucifixion.”

“Never, Lord. This shall never happen to you. Messiahs don’t die. Especially messiahs who can do the kinds of things you do. Messiahs win.”

“Get behind me, Satan. You do not understand the things of God.”

Even though Jesus predicted his death several times before the fatal night when he was betrayed, condemned, and crucified, when Jesus is hanging on the cross and then taken down and placed in the tomb, the apostles still didn’t understand. They still did not have a category for a crucified Messiah, which is why we find them in the upper room, frightened, with the doors locked, we’re told, for fear of the Jewish authorities.

They’re not there on Saturday saying, “Yes! I can hardly wait till Sunday.” Do you see? The apostles themselves hadn’t gotten it put together quite yet. It’s not too surprising if John the Baptist doesn’t have it quite put together yet. And now his words of uncertainty emerge. Now when the disciples of John the Baptist approach Jesus, note well how he replies. He defines his ministry in terms of prophetic passages.

Verse 4: “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.” Not every clause, but almost every clause in those lines is drawn from two Old Testament passages.

Those passages are, first, Isaiah 35:5–6. “Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy.” And, again, Isaiah 61:1. “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.”

Whatever other Old Testament texts John the Baptist knew, he knew Isaiah. We know that because he understood his own ministry in terms of a quotation from Isaiah. “Who do you think you are, John?” “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord.’ ” He’s quoting Isaiah 40. He understood the text.

So John would pick up these allusive references to Isaiah 35 and Isaiah 61. Jesus is claiming that the things he is doing in his ministry are the very things that are transparently fulfilling Old Testament prophecy. But you know how it is. When you know a text, if someone quotes one line from it, you remember the surrounding context. So if I say to you, “I tell you the truth, unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,” where is that from? John 3.

What’s it about? Nicodemus. You remember the exchange, and you remember how it runs on to John 3:16. Nobody has to explain that to you. The reference itself is enough to pull together the entire context. There are many passages in the Bible where if I quoted merely a clip, you would remember the rest of the account all around it.

Now if John the Baptist knows the text of Isaiah and he hears these brief allusions to Isaiah 35 and Isaiah 61, you have to imagine he knows the context around them. But that’s the striking thing, because in the context around both of these passages, there is actually reference to judgment, which Jesus leaves out. It’s striking.

Thus, the passage I quoted from Isaiah 35:5–6, “Then will the eyes of the blind be opened,” in the immediately preceding two verses we read, “Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts, ‘Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you.’ Then will the eyes of the blind be opened,” and so on. Jesus left out the judgment, and John would have known Jesus left out the judgment.

Likewise in Isaiah 61. Verse 1 says, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me to preach good news to the poor,” but the next verse says, “To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God.” Jesus leaves that bit out, and John knows Jesus leaves that bit out, and Jesus knows that John knows that Jesus has left that bit out. The question is.… Why did Jesus leave it out?

The hint comes in verse 6. Verse 4: “Jesus replied, ‘Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the good news is preached to the poor.’ ” Verse 6: “Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.”

Do you see what Jesus is saying? “John, look closely. The promised messianic blessings have already dawned. They are already here. Look around. They’re happening. If the judgment that is also promised is not yet here … well, hang in there. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.”

The fact of the matter is that transitional generation had to learn, as the apostles themselves had to learn, that instead of the messianic King coming with a bang and it would be all over, in fact, he was coming in a surprising way, with the kingdom coming slowly, like yeast in food, which takes time to make the food rise. He comes as a sower comes, sowing the seed. Sometimes the seed is taken away by birds. Sometimes it falls on rocky ground. Sometimes it’s crushed with thorns, but it produces fruit in due season on the different qualities of soil.

They had to get used to this notion of a kingdom that is dawning but not yet consummated. They just didn’t have the categories for that quite yet. So one of the things Jesus must do is help the people to see that the promised messianic blessings are dawning, but the end is not yet, so don’t give up now. “Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me. Hang in there.”

2. Portrait of a defended baptist.

Verses 7 and following. Apparently, some of the people around Jesus, some of the crowds, have heard this exchange. In other words, the disciples of John the Baptist ask questions of Jesus, Jesus gives these answers, but there are other people around who are hearing this.

It’s as if John’s question has elicited some responses in the crowd, and Jesus does not want the crowd now to go about bad-mouthing John. You can imagine the sorts of things they might be tempted to say. “Dear ol’ John the Baptist. He’s turning out to be a wee bit of a wimp after all. Bit of a disappointment, you know. Stick him in jail for a bit, and all that courage and spit and fire.… He’s wimping out.”

Jesus won’t have it. In the past, John the Baptist has borne witness to Jesus. Now Jesus bears witness to John the Baptist, yet the two are very different. When John bears witness to Jesus, John says things like, “He must increase, but I must decrease. I am not even worthy to undo his sandals.” But now when Jesus bears witness to John to defend John, in fact, the argument runs quite differently.

Have you noticed what Jesus says? “As John’s disciples were leaving, Jesus began to speak to the crowd about John. ‘So what did you go out into the desert to see? When you went out to listen to John preach, and when some of you went out to be baptized by him, why did you go to him? What drew you? Because you thought he was a reed swaying in the wind, without backbone, a wimp? Is that why you went out to see him?’ ”

Of course, he knows perfectly well that’s not the case. They went out because he was a prophetic voice calling the nation to repentance. Straight as a die and wearing the traditional garb of ancient Old Testament prophets, even eating some of their food, locusts and wild honey, coming in off the desert, calling people to repentance, insisting that soldiers be satisfied with their wages, that they perpetrate justice, that the Jews not be arrogant because of their lineage, and so on. He was calling people to repent. He was preparing the way of repentance for the coming of the King.

No, they didn’t go out because he was a wimp. They went out because his voice was strong. So they don’t have the right to start charging him with being a wimp now. That’s what Jesus is saying. “So then what did you go out to see? Why did you go out to the desert to see him? Because you expected a man dressed in fine clothes? Did you go out because he was posh, maybe thought you’d get on the inside track, a little money trickling down from him?”

Not when you’re eating locusts and wild honey. No, no. In those days, there was a poor class and there was a rich class. There wasn’t much of a middle class. “ ‘Those who wear fine clothes are in palaces.’ That’s not why you went out to see him. You didn’t go to see him because he was filthy rich and you hoped for a handout, hoped that he was posh. What did you go out to see? A prophet? Is that why you went? Yes,” Jesus says, “you have that right. In fact, he was more than a prophet.”

More than a prophet? In what sense is John more than a prophet? He tells us. He is more than a prophet because he not only delivers the word of God, but there is word of God about him. He is not only a prophet, but he is also the subject of certain crucial prophecies, and the particular prophecy Jesus has in mind is drawn from the prophet Malachi.

“Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written: ‘I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’ ” In other words, John the Baptist was given the particular task of preparing the way for the messenger of the covenant, the Lord Jesus himself. Just as (using the language of Isaiah) he prepares the way for the Lord, so he prepares the way for the messenger of the new covenant. He’s the Elijah who was to come, to use the language of the prophet Malachi.

He’s not only a prophet; he is the subject of particular Old Testament prophecies. He’s more than a prophet. That’s when Jesus says, “Listen, I tell you the truth: Among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist.” Do you hear what Jesus is saying? Supposing I had gotten up this evening after John Taylor introduced me and said, “I solemnly tell you the truth. John Taylor is the greatest man born of women because he introduced me.”

Now it would get a good belly laugh or you’d be calling for people in white coats. In any case, I suspect this conference would rapidly be over if you thought I was actually making a serious claim. That’s what Jesus is saying. He is saying, “John is greater than the prophets. There was a prophecy about him that made him the one who introduced me. He is the one about whom Malachi spoke. He would prepare the way for the messenger of the covenant. That’s what makes him great.”

When John defends Jesus, he says, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” When Jesus defends John, Jesus says, “He’s the greatest man born of woman up to this point because he introduced me.” It’s a stunning thing. In other words, in the estimation of Jesus, John the Baptist is greater than Abraham. In the estimation of Jesus, John the Baptist is greater than Moses. In the estimation of Jesus, John the Baptist is greater than King David. In the estimation of Jesus, John the Baptist is greater than Isaiah.

Isn’t that stunning? He wants you to see it and believe it. “I tell you the truth.” The same point is made in slightly different ways elsewhere in the New Testament. There is a remarkable passage at the end of John 10. Do you recall it? In John 10, verse 40, we read, “Jesus went back across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing in the early days. Here he stayed, and many people came to him. They said, ‘Though John never performed a miraculous sign, all that John said about this man was true.’ ”

How would you like that for an epitaph? “Don Carson performed no miracle, but everything Don Carson said about Jesus was true.” Oh, I could think of a lot worse epitaphs than that, can’t you? John’s role was, to this point in history, unique. There is a sense in which Abraham pointed forward to Christ. There is a sense in which Moses pointed forward to Christ.

There is a sense in which King David pointed forward to Christ. He is the beginning of the Davidic line from which eventually Jesus springs. Isaiah points to Christ. But there was only one man who could say, “I’m not worthy to undo his sandals,” and that’s what made him great. He could point out with greater immediacy and greater understanding who Jesus was than everybody who came before him. That’s what made him great, in Jesus’ own estimate.

Now for Jesus to say that with a straight face, again, presupposes either that he has this divine self-consciousness … he knows who he is, it’s not exaggeration, it’s exactly the way it is … or he’s a nut, an international-class megalomaniac. There are no alternatives.

3. Portrait of an eclipsed baptist.

We then read in verse 11b, “Yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” Now if verse 11 coheres, if it makes sense at all, then the axis of comparison in the first part of the verse must be the same as the axis of comparison in the second part of the verse.

In the first part of the verse, John the Baptist is greater than all those who came before him because he could point out more immediately and more clearly who Jesus was than all who came before him. So similarly, in the second part of the verse, the axis must be the same. The least in the kingdom can point out who Jesus is more immediately and more clearly than John the Baptist, because John the Baptist, after all, is about to lose his head. It only takes 3 more chapters.

The least in the kingdom now will live through to the other side of the death and resurrection and will have a greater understanding of Jesus, both as king and suffering servant, than all who came before. Those themes are there in the Old Testament, but putting them together just isn’t found. Here, the least in the kingdom can point this out.

Now some of you may say, “Wait a minute, Don. Wait a minute. Isn’t there one verse that seems to contradict all of this? Doesn’t John’s gospel say that John the Baptist said, pointing to Jesus, ‘Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world’? Doesn’t that show John the Baptist had some notion of Jesus as the suffering, redeeming lamb?”

It’s a little more complicated than that, because first-century Jews sometimes spoke of Israel as a warrior lamb. They expected the messianic figure to come as a warrior lamb who would take on the sin, all right. He would crush it. He would take away sin, all right. Indeed, the particular verb that is used, “The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,” is not a verb that is normally used in an atoning context. It’s usually a verb that is used in the context of victory.

So often in John’s gospel, people under God’s providence see better than other people. Do you remember how that’s true of Caiaphas? Caiaphas knew very well that Jesus was a menace. You know, “It’s much better for this man to die than that the whole nation should perish.” John comments, “He didn’t just say this on his own.” God himself was providentially working behind the scenes to show that he was speaking prophetically better than he knew.

So also, I think, John the Baptist.… John the Baptist expected Jesus to [inaudible], but not only as the warrior lamb but also as the suffering servant, the propitiating Passover lamb. Do you know what? It’s John the writer who puts those things together in the Apocalypse. Do you remember the great vision of Revelation 4 and Revelation 5?

Revelation 4 depicts God in his sovereignty on the throne, transcendent, the very angels of heaven covering their faces before the throne, crying, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.” Chapter 4 of Revelation sets the stage for the drama of chapter 5. Chapter 4 is all about the transcendence, sovereignty, greatness, and irrepressible majesty of God Almighty. Then in chapter 5, the drama unfolds.

In the right hand of him who sits on the throne is a scroll. This is a scroll for all God’s purposes and judgment and blessing. A voice goes out to all the universe. “Who is worthy to approach such a God as this just described and take the scroll and be God’s agent to bring to pass God’s purposes?” In the symbolism of the day, that would be accomplished by cutting the seals of the scroll. If the seals are cut, then God’s purposes will unfold.

No one is found who is worthy. John weeps and weeps because no one is found. It means God’s purposes won’t come to pass. Then the interpreting elder touches John on the shoulder, as it were, and says, “Stop your crying, John. Look, the lion of the tribe of Judah. He has prevailed to open the scroll.” “So I looked,” John says, “and I saw a lamb.”

We’re not supposed to think of a lion and a lamb parked side by side. In Apocalyptic symbolism, you have mixed metaphors. The lion is the lamb. So the lion is introduced, and John looks up and sees the lamb … a sacrificed lamb, a lamb looking as though it had been slaughtered, yet with seven horns on its head. That’s the perfection of kingly authority. He is simultaneously the slaughtered sacrificial lamb and the kingly lamb who crushes all opposition. He is both.

It is John who understands that, the same writer who reports John the Baptist’s words in John 1:29. “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” I don’t think there is any conclusive evidence at all that John the Baptist had a really good understanding that Jesus would simultaneously be king and suffering servant. The apostles themselves didn’t have that understanding until after the resurrection. But you know what?

If you’ve been a Christian only six weeks, you know better than John the Baptist. The least in the kingdom has that one figured out. Not because we’re brighter, but because we live after those events. The least in the kingdom can say with understanding, “Jesus died on the cross for my sin, and he rose again. God accepts his righteousness, and he bears my sin. It’s a kind of exchange.” The least Christian can say that. Thus, the least Christian can point out who Jesus is with greater clarity and greater immediacy than John the Baptist. That’s what makes us great.

Now this text does not go on to try to rank Christians by how effective they are at their evangelism. That would be a huge mistake. There are too many things you can’t possibly assess. Is George Whitefield greater than Samuel Zwemer, famed missionary to the Arab Muslims of two generations ago, who worked 40 years translating the Bible into Arabic, saw eight converts, and five of them were put to death?

Is one of you greater than Samuel Zwemer? How can we possibly assess that? This is not a comparison of Christian with Christian. It’s a redemptive historical comparison. It’s a comparison between those who lived up to and including John the Baptist with those on this side of the cross.

On this side of the cross and resurrection, the least in the kingdom is greater, on this axis, than all who came before. It’s bound up with the enormous privilege we have of living this side, where we can put king and suffering servant together and see with greater clarity and immediacy than all who came before just who Jesus is.

The remaining verses in this paragraph, as difficult as they are (and there are two or three lines here that are very difficult), merely confirm what I’ve said. Thus, in verse 12, our modern translations have.… Well, if you have 12 translations, you have about 20 different interpretations. Verse 12 is extremely difficult and highly debated. I’ll just tell you what it means.

Unless I’m mistaken, it reads this way. “From the days of John the Baptist until now …” That is, from the time Jesus begins his ministry during the days of John the Baptist right up to the time Jesus is speaking. “… the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing.” Yes, it has, in the miracles he has been performing, in the demons he has exorcised, in the preaching to the poor, in people being brought under the authority of his word, in the announcement of the kingdom, in the training exercise in chapter 12.

“The kingdom has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it.” Now the word for forceful men is always negative, and the verb rendered lay hold of it is always negative as well. Exploit or rape or plunder is the way it’s usually rendered. I think what the text is saying is this. Yes, the kingdom has dawned. It is forcefully advancing, but it’s not coming with a bang as John had hoped. Rather, it is being contested, and forceful people are shoving back and trying to exploit it and domesticate it and pillage it.

This is why in the next chapter we see more of this context. When Jesus cast out demons, the opponents were saying, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. We know how he did this. It’s by the prince of demons, Beelzebub himself.” As the kingdom advances, so there is pushback, which is not what John the Baptist expected, but it’s what the whole New Testament insists upon. That is, the kingdom has dawned. It is not yet consummated. We live in a contested era.

“For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John.” Until John, because now with the coming of Christ these prophecies are fulfilled in Christ Jesus. “And if you are willing to accept it, he, John the Baptist, is the Elijah who was to come.” That is, the figure announced in the prophecy from Malachi to which Jesus has already alluded in verse 10. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

So then, portrait of a discouraged baptist, portrait of a defended baptist, and portrait of an eclipsed baptist, eclipsed by you and me. That brings us, then, to some applications that bear directly on the theme of this conference.

1. The deepest Christian criteria for self-assessment, self-understanding, and self-identification, individually and corporately, are simply not the criteria of the world.

What makes you great? That you’re from New England? Your money? Who your baseball team is? Your bloodlines? How utterly beautiful you are or what a handsome hunk? How much education you have? What a business success you have been? How well your children have turned out? Your youth or your age? Your popularity or your influence?

None of those are on this axis at all. This axis is really quite different. Yet so often, these are the axes that do constrain our self-identity. Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night and, in that hazy zone between being awake and being asleep, remembered something you’ve said or done to somebody in the past, where you have been such a twit? You’ve been cruel. You said something you shouldn’t have said.

You wake up, and somehow your mind flashes back to it. You lie there in bed in this twilight zone and writhe in embarrassment. Do you ever do that, or am I the only one who does that? I have news for you. The older you get, the more of those you remember. Do you know the really shocking thing about them, though? Almost always I can writhe in embarrassment over things I’ve done that are bad at the horizontal level. How many of us writhe in embarrassment over our shame before God, that we have so dishonored him?

Thus, even in our repentance, even in our sorrow, even in our writhing, so often we’re far more concerned about what others think of us than what God thinks of us. It’s shocking, isn’t it? All of these criteria of self-identity that the world uses to enable individuals to find their place in the pecking order of the culture are really not all that important compared with what Jesus is saying here. That brings us to the second point.

2. Christian criteria for self-understanding, for self-assessment, are radically Christ-centered.

You see, the assumption in this comparison is, first, the amazing privilege of knowing Christ, and then also, secondarily, of making him known with clarity. But begin with the beginning: first knowing him, being born this side of the cross and knowing the living God because Christ Jesus has borne our sins in his own body on the tree.

We have been reconciled to him, who is our maker and our judge. We are children of the living God. We are members of his covenant community. We belong to the church of the living God. Our goal, our purpose, our destiny is eternity. Are not those the things that should give us our foundational self-identity?

3. Christian criteria for self-assessment are radically tied to proclamation and witness.

By now we should see that’s the whole point of verse 11. John the Baptist was greater than those who came before him because he was able to point out who Jesus was with greater immediacy than all who came before him. The Christian’s greatness, greater than that of John the Baptist, is not simply that we know Christ but that we can point him out with greater immediacy than all who came before. Otherwise, verse 11 doesn’t cohere. The two axes aren’t the same.

It’s not just that we know who Jesus is, but just as John bore witness to him and that’s what made him great, so we bear witness to him with even greater clarity. That’s what makes us great. That means if you have a church full of people who never, ever bear witness to who Jesus is, they are not engaging in the activity, which, according to Jesus, is precisely that which establishes our greatness in the redemptive historical sphere as being greater than Isaiah or King David or John the Baptist.

It is such a privilege to be able to talk with clarity about who Jesus is. Thus, there is a huge sense in which Christian witness and Christian evangelism and Christian outreach must not rest first and foremost on the bed of painful obligation, though there is obligation. It should spring instead from the life of grateful privilege. We’re Christians. We know what we know because we live this side of Calvary and the empty tomb. In God’s mercy, it has fallen to us to present Christ with greater simplicity and clarity than all who came before.

Shall flowers hide their beauty?

Shall rainbows turn to gray?

Shall thunderstorms be muzzled?

Shall lambs forget to play?

And shall I be silent

At grace beyond degree?

Before the cross I count as loss

What once was dear to me.

Let us pray.

Open our eyes, Lord God, to understand, to grasp, to feel the immeasurable privilege of being blood-bought children of God whose calling and right and privilege it is to bear witness to your dear Son, that we will view witness increasingly as a privilege for which to give thanks much more than a duty to be performed, for the glory of Christ Jesus, for the good of the people for whom he shed his life’s blood, for our good. In Jesus’ name, amen.