O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, That God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. 9 And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: every tree therefore which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Lk 3:7–9.
We continue with our series concerning John’s wilderness and exactly why John was led into the wilderness. You have to do historical study about the class that John’s parents moved in. The “clergy” of the day by the time Malachi was a prophetic voice in the nation, arrogance in this class had already taken root. John’s leading to the wilderness was a separation from this class and every expectation that he would follow in his father’s footsteps into the priesthood. In fact God was needing the prophetic and not the priesthood to bring the changes. There are those seasons which a person anointed to act out God’s purpose through a prophetic vein is needed to prepare the people for those changes. God was not starting a new thing in the Temple, rather in the wilderness. Away from the mechanics of “business as usual” of sacrifices, incense burning, looking after the Lampstand.
It was more than doing what a Scribe would do, copy scripture, yet these who wrote and copied the Scriptures also missed what God was doing. We can know the Word and yet still miss it. Hence we need the Holy Spirit to bring us discernment.
The teaching of the Scriptures about the times of the 400 year silence, where no official prophetic voice spoke to the nation, fell to the Sadducees and Pharisees. Yet in their origin, motivation to know the Law was a valuable to keep the people aware of God’s Word, yet we see from what John called them, “Brood of Vipers” they were already way beyond and detached from what God was doing. They missed the need for discernment and thought that knowledge qualifies. Yet we know their knowledge made them the opponents of God’s forerunner and the Messiah.
This is not an attack against clergy but rather what starts in the Spirit via the Vocation that burns within us, becomes rapidly a system where passion and vision departs in transferring a sense of security in the system itself. We cannot box in the Spirit in a systemic box…limited by our expectations and our need for predictability, respectability. The system has good intentions, but when God does something outside of our system, we oppose and become opposition. We know for both John and Jesus this passes through death. Both died for living outside of the system. Jesus however is resurrected and this opposition passes upon the Early Church.
The situation in Israel became so miserable that becoming a priest, part of the system, meant they could eat bread in the famine. The priesthood being a means to eat not just worship and motivation has become so contrary to what He called the nation to be which is a Royal Priesthood and a Holy Nation.
For John to understand the new thing God was about to do it meant being away from “his class” and discern it in the wilderness. When Jesus the Messiah presented Himself, John immediately saw fulfilled the word God had given him, in the wilderness, concerning who is the Messiah. 3 signs were given, the open heaven, the Spirit descending, the Voice of the Father. The wilderness gives us discernment and preparation for what is coming. We are given signs, and once we see them we recognize them and identify what we need to identify. What we need to identify fully is the Son of Man, the Son of David, Son of God. We also need to identify the Antichrist, who has come, is come and will come again.
If we were in the midst of the noise, current religious trends, routines, we would lack the need for discernment. This discernment was crucial in John’s day, as it is in ours too.
Walking closely with the Spirit differentiates those who recognize and those who have embraced the systemic who do not discern.
May we walk by the Spirit and not the system.
Maranatha!!!
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