Chapter # 1 Paragraph # 4 Study # 10
January 29, 2023
Broadlands, Louisiana
(Download Audio)
Thesis: The setting of John's message "in the wilderness" is intended to be a subliminal metaphor of the condition of the human heart and mind.
Introduction: In our last study, we considered the nature of those who were involved in the interrogation of Witness-John because of his extraordinary popularity. Because of the heavy investment in the hearts and minds of those who made up each category of those who wanted to know who he claimed to be, Author-John recorded the questions and the answers. That investment was the commitment each group had made in the delusion of "greatness
before God because of one's labors
for God". This, at its roots, was the delusion of Leah that "Love" can be bought by performance. It is the reason people throughout the ages have "believed" that "status before God" is an earned commodity rooted in behavior.
Author-John wanted, above all, for his audience/readers to be "born of God". For this to happen, he declared that such birth was rooted in "faith in His name" (1:12) in contrast to the "not out ofs" of 1:13. In order for this birth to result, Author-John wrote that we must pay particular attention to Witness-John's agency of that "faith".
Thus, we have been looking into Witness-John's "witness", and this morning we have come to the issue of what his "witness" has to say about the attitude men have about themselves as the summons to "believe in His name" comes to them.
- I. The Issue Of Witness-John's Use of Metaphor Regarding Men's Attitude Regarding Themselves.
- A. Isaiah is Witness-John's fundamental authority for his message.
- 1. In the Book of Isaiah, we find declarations regarding the building of a physical highway through the wilderness.
- a. In Isaiah 11:16 we read, "And there shall be a highway for the remnant of His people, which shall be left, from Assyria; like as it was to Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt".
- b. In Isaiah 19:23-25 we read, "In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians. In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the land: Whom the Lord of Hosts shall bless saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria, the work of My hands, and Israel, Mine inheritance."
- c. In Isaiah 35:8-10 we read, "8 A highway will be there, a roadway, and it will be called the Highway of Holiness. The unclean will not travel on it, But it [will] be for him who walks that way, And fools will not wander [on it.] 9 No lion will be there, Nor will any vicious beast go up on it; These will not be found there. But the redeemed will walk [there,] 10 And the ransomed of the LORD will return And come with joyful shouting to Zion, With everlasting joy upon their heads. They will find gladness and joy, And sorrow and sighing will flee away".
- 2. Witness-John, taking this physical reality to come as the basis of his metaphor, insists that Isaiah 40:3 defines him.
- a. Witness-John did not come to build a physical highway in the physical wilderness.
- 1) Throughout the Scriptures we are told that the physical creation has been designed to illustrate-unto-understanding the relational creation that has to do with how "persons" are to interact with each other in Love and Truth.
- a) Genesis 1:14.
- b) Psalm 19:1-4.
- c) Romans 1:18-20.
- d) John 3:12.
- e) Matthew 16:1-4.
- f) And all of the parables in which the "Kingdom of God" is "likened unto" the realities of the physical world in which we live.
- 2) Even the well-known record of the Magi coming to Jerusalem to worship the newly born King of the Jews reveals that those who paid attention to the physical creation's "witness" knew more than those who refuse to allow the physical creation to illustrate-to-understanding in respect to the relational creation.
- b. Instead, Witness-John came to make it possible for the "redeemed" to walk on that Highway of Holiness by making the category of "the redeemed" a genuine reality.
- c. In other words, there have to be "redeemed people" for the physical highway prophecies to be fulfilled.
- d. Therefore, Witness-John became "a voice of redemption" and he only uttered his voice in the wilderness.
- 1) This "voice of redemption" was to speak the words that would allow those burdened by their sins to be transformed into "the children of God".
- 2) That he chose to utter his words in a physical wilderness was his way of maximizing the impact of his words.
- a) This "maximizing" was rooted in the fact that people are subliminally influenced by their physical environment.
- b) A physical wilderness, attached to the summons to "Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness; Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God" and interpreted by John to mean "repent for the forgiveness of sins" becomes a metaphor of the condition of the heart and mind so that forgiveness can be offered.
- c) Thus, when Witness-John's "witness" is properly understood as a statement of the twistedness of men's hearts and minds, those who understand can "be born of God by faith in the name of Jesus".
