Have you ever noticed that there are times
when you are reading the scripture and you
come upon a passage that you have read
many times before, but for the first time
you see it and it staggers you and
begins to adjust some of your perhaps long
-held theology because it does not fit maybe
the way you had been thinking before and
you can't drop it.
It just moves around in your mind and
messes it up.
One of those passages is in the first
chapter of the Gospel of John and it
is about John the Baptist, not John the
author of this particular book, but in John
chapter 1 verse 29, beginning there, listen to
what it says.
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.
Now folks, it's the next words that staggered
me.
I myself did not know him.
What?
But the reason I came baptizing with water
was that he might be revealed to Israel.
Then John gave this testimony.
I saw the Spirit come down from heaven
as a dove and remain on him.
And look folks, he says it again.
I would not have known him.
What?
I know what's not in the Bible.
It's just, 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.
Folks, I'm staggered by John the Baptist statement.
I didn't know him and I would not
have known him.
He said, I only had one clue.
The one who sent me said, I'm giving
you one clue.
That's all.
When you see the Spirit come down and
remain, that's him.
Now, one of the things that bothers me
about this is you realize, of course, that
Jesus and John were cousins.
I thought they kind of grew up together
and every Thursday morning would have breakfast at
Denny's and would plan this.
And maybe a couple of years beforehand, Jesus
says to John, John, how do you like
locusts?
I expect you to eat them.
You can wash it down with wild honey,
but you also need to buy a camel's
hair shirt.
That will really make you preach.
But not so.
He says, I didn't know him.
Now, folks, when I saw this, here are
some things that began to stagger me.
I realized that there was nothing physical about
Jesus that would cause anyone to look at
him and say, Messiah.
No big M on his chest.
No blue tights and flowing cape.
Now, here's how that affected my prior thinking.
Sometimes you learn things and you really don't
even know where you learned them.
You just sort of absorb them and it's
there.
And I realized that I had sort of
joined many people, for instance, who believe, and
maybe you do, that Jesus glowed in the
dark.
I mean, you've seen the pictures, haven't you,
that they draw of him with the big
symbol behind his head?
And on Christmas, which is not too far
away from us, we'll put perhaps our nativity
scenes out on our lawns and they look
relatively normal except for the manger.
Folks, if that had been true, do you
realize that John the Baptist would have known,
this has got to be him.
The kid who never could play hide and
go seek.
And do you realize that Judas would not
have had to kiss him to identify him.
He would just say, get the one you
can see.
So obviously he did not glow in the
dark.
And we also have this tendency to think
that he was perhaps eight feet tall.
He was the one who could say something,
yea though I walk through the valley of
the shadow of death, I'll fear no evil.
Because I'm the biggest thing in the valley.
Well, the average, and I understand how we
believe that, because we, I don't know if
you ever sing turn your eyes upon Jesus,
but when you do, where do you look?
The average male height of Jesus day was
five feet six inches tall.
And I figure he was about that height,
otherwise he couldn't have lost himself in the
crowds as he did, which by the way,
the Bible also tells us, when we'll see
him, we'll be like him.
So you tall men enjoy it now, okay.
If Jesus had been eight feet tall, John
the Baptist would have known this man must
be him.
And Judas would not have had to kiss
him to identify him.
He would have just said, get the big
one.
We also tend to believe, some do, that
Jesus was very handsome.
Well, of course, I have his picture on
my wall.
And he's the most beautiful redheaded Irishman I've
ever seen.
But folks, if I understand Isaiah correctly, he
says that he had no form nor comeliness.
Now we don't use that word comely much
anymore, but it literally means no handsomeness, no
beauty that we should desire him.
So if he had been ridiculously handsome, surely
John would have known, and Judas wouldn't have
had to have kissed him.
He would have just said, get the pretty
one.
And there are those who believe his voice
was different.
You see, when we speak to each other,
good morning, how are you?
Good to see you today.
But some think that when Jesus spoke, there
was an electronic echo in his voice.
And the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra was playing in
the background.
Now, if that had been true, John would
have known, gotta be him.
And Judas would not have had to kiss
him to identify him.
He would just say, when you hear the
orchestra, that's him.
Now, obviously from this, there were no physical
clues that Jesus was the Messiah.
Now, there are implications to this that are
so wonderful, it's just awesome to me.
First of all, I need to tell you
this, and you know this, I'm not trying
to insult your intelligence.
The word Messiah and the word Christ are
identical words.
Messiah is the Hebrew word.
Christ Christos would be, or Messiah or Messiah,
Christ Christos would be the Greek form.
And they are identical words.
They both mean the same thing.
The meaning of that word is anointed one.
Now, it also had come to mean deliverer.
Now, the interesting thing is, we human beings
long for, it's ingrained in us, deliverers.
This is why heroes are important.
This is why we go for the strong
sportsmen and the big Hollywood types and so
forth, because it seems that they, the heroic
ones, have risen above the mundane levels of
our life and are sort of almost not
human.
Now, notice this about our deliverers.
They all look good.
They're all big.
They fly.
They have voices that project.
That's the way we put heroes together.
And we all know that we need one.
Israel knew that they needed a deliverer, and
it seems that every child born almost, they
would look and say, are you the one?
Are you the one that will deliver us?
There is the cry on every heart for
deliverance.
And we all know we need help.
Now, I've heard people say, oh, I don't
need a deliverer.
I can do it myself.
All I need is a chance.
Aha.
They just identified their deliverer as chance.
But they all recognize I've got to somehow
have outside help.
And so there was this constant expectation of
a deliverer, and it had become contaminated by
cultural understandings even by the time of Jesus.
They knew, they expected, they thought, they dreamed
that the deliverer, when he comes, will throw
off the shackles of Rome and set us
free and, of course, put us up now
as the leaders.
In fact, it had become so corrupted, and
you ladies will love this, that men believed
that when the Messiah, the deliverer, came, their
wives would have one child every month.
Isn't that wonderful?
Just makes you pray for the Messiah.
No.
Now, the reason for that, you see, is
they believed that children were wealth.
So hey, ultimate wealth, a child a month.
All kinds of cultural expectancies had come about.
I'm convinced, and I think I'll prove it
to you this morning, that even John the
Baptist, though he had this one clue given
to him from God the Father, had some
cultural expectancies of Jesus.
I know the apostles did.
I know they did.
Constantly during Jesus being Messiah, the apostles would
sort of stop him and say, are you
gonna do it now?
Right down to the end.
When Jesus is on the Mount of Olives
ready to ascend to the Father, once more,
the apostles ask him, are you gonna do
it now?
If I had been Jesus, I would have
said, beam me up, Father.
There's no intelligent life now.
But there beats in the heart of every
human being the desire for a Deliverer.
The thing is, you have choices of Deliverers.
You will either choose and create what you
would like to see as your own Deliverer,
or you will accept the true anointed one,
Messiah.
We put our Deliverers together as idealized human
beings.
Humankind has always done so.
The Greeks and the Romans created their gods,
and they created their own gods as super
idealized human beings.
Unfortunately, they also created them in their minds
as a bit arbitrary and promiscuous, which was
a reflection of themselves.
But they also created them as idealized beauty.
And to this day, we will often say
for beauty or handsomeness that they have the
Greek god or the Greek goddess look.
Because that's what we do when we put
Deliverers together.
Hollywood, when they put their Deliverers together, what
do they look like?
Tall, handsome, unmovable, never cry, guns
that have 5,000 bullets in each one.
Always the ability to outdraw the bad guys.
Never moved by the wiles of a woman,
kisses only his horse.
If you ever visit Universal Studios in California,
you'll even discover the ways that they try
to make sure they look heroic to you.
Because you see, not all of these good
looking people that you've ever seen are as
tall as you think.
Well, they handle that.
They lower the doors so that when they
walk through, it looks like they've occupied the
whole door, you know.
And you think, whoa, look at that guy.
When he's really about my size.
That's the way we do.
In fact, we love messianic type stories.
We love deliverance type stories.
The literature that tends to survive through the
centuries is that literature that has a deliverance
in it.
A deliverer who, when it seems that all
things are absolutely impossible at that last moment,
with incredible thought or incredible speed or incredible
strength, they deliver everybody.
Or maybe just 30 seconds before the commercial,
the cavalry arrives.
Oh, yeah.
We love it.
Perry Mason, remember him?
Never lost a case.
When it appeared that someone was going to
die unjustly at the last moment with phenomenal
skills, messianic deliverance, he would solve the case.
We love that kind of literature.
It speaks to the human heart, because we
all know we need a deliverer.
But you see, we put it together our
way.
And that's the problem.
In fact, we have done something in California
that I know that you in Florida are
much more intelligent and would never do this.
But we have developed a system to tap
into for commercial purposes the desire for deliverance.
And you can go in my state to
just about any place of business and for
one dollar buy a chance at deliverance in
the lottery.
So you would never do that.
But we did.
And I watch, you know, maybe I've stopped
at a grocery store and I watch people
with almost nothing, man, they can hardly buy
anything, but they've got enough money to buy
a chance at deliverance.
Because we think, what would I do with
100 million dollars?
Deliverance.
In fact, I get letters from a very
famous lady.
She knows me personally.
She uses my name throughout the letter.
Her name is Carolyn Davis.
And she writes to me regularly.
Dear Gail Irwin, knows me.
You and the Irwin family, as well as
the Palmer family across the street and the
Allworth family next door have been given six
chances to win 10 million dollars in the
Reader's Digest sweepstakes.
I know she knows me because she uses
my name throughout the letter.
And I look at my tickets, you know,
and my numbers are a little bit funny
written.
And I think, I have the ones.
Oh, what would I do with 10 million
dollars?
Deliverance.
So I put it in my mouth, put
a stamp on it, sit down.
Deliverance.
It beats in every heart, doesn't it?
It's just there.
The literature that I mentioned as a kid,
Superman.
Oh, he is sort of the ultimate American
heroic person.
Faster than a speeding bullet.
More powerful than a locomotive.
It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Superman.
And probably every kid, I know you don't
look like a kid now, you guys are
older, but there's still a little boy in
you that sort of dreams of being impervious
to all the bullets.
Able to be stronger than a locomotive.
We still dream about it, don't we guys?
Am I touching it?
And to be able to fly.
Heroic.
Now, God sends a deliverer, a true deliverer,
and the thing that so fascinates me is
he does not meet one single thing that
we human beings would put together as the
deliverer.
But he is the true deliverer.
See, the fact is, Superman doesn't exist.
The Greek and the Roman gods did not
exist.
None of these heroes that we have leaned
upon exist.
I don't think there is a lottery winner
in our audience this morning of significance.
All of these forms of deliverance are mere
fancy, but the true deliverer who comes has
only one clue.
When you see the spirit come down and
remain, that's him.
Now, most interesting thing.
When Jesus was baptized by John, shortly after
that, and John says, I've seen and I
testify, this is the one, shortly after that,
Herod comes and arrests John.
Throws him in jail.
I can see John as he heads toward
jail with his disciples walking along, and he
says, hey guys, don't worry about it.
I have just baptized the deliverer.
Oh, maybe 30 seconds before the commercial, he'll
be here.
No jail can hold me now.
Do you know what happened?
The Bible says when Herod arrested John, Jesus
left the country.
Huh?
Some deliverer?
No.
But then you find after this baptism and
the temptation, Jesus goes to his home church,
shall we say, and in Luke chapter 4,
when they recognize him, of course, to be
the teacher that he was, the scroll of
the prophet Isaiah, Luke 4, 17, was handed
to him.
Unrolling it, he found the place where it
is written.
Listen to this, folks.
The spirit of the Lord is upon me.
Because he has anointed me.
There we go.
And what has he anointed him to do?
Does not say throw off the shackles of
Rome.
Make you the most prosperous people in the
world.
Doesn't say the things that we would put
together as our messianic expectancies, but it says
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom to
the captives, to prisoners, recovery of sight for
the blind, to release the oppressed, and to
proclaim the year of the Lord's favor or
the time of God's favor or that season
when God is saying, look, folks, I am
on your side.
Awesome.
You see, that's the way God puts a
deliverer together.
Different from the way we would.
But you see, none of those other fancies
that we have of deliverers produce.
But Jesus does.
Jesus does.
But now we must go back to John
in his jail.
He's sitting there and he's thinking, where's the
deliverer?
I thought he would be here by now.
Have you, now don't raise your hands on
this, but have you ever prayed for a
physical rescue from God or been upset that
he didn't grant one automatically?
I mean, the worst thing in the world,
you know, is you're coming to church and
you have a flat tire.
God, why'd you let this happen?
I mean, I'm going to church.
Are you God?
Have you ever gotten into a situation that
was really trying your being and your soul
and, oh man, it was maybe the most
difficult thing you'd ever faced.
And yet, God left you there.
You think, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Aren't you God?
Don't you deliver people from these difficulties?
I think John was thinking that.
I just baptized the deliverer.
And here I am still.
But you see, physical deliverance from some trials
are not necessarily what the great deliverer wants
to have happen.
Sometimes, yes.
Sometimes, no.
But there are things that are far more
important than that.
We know even as we read from the
life of Paul, he spent much of his
life in prison and yet he says, hey,
don't worry about it.
My being in jail has fallen out for
the good of the gospel.
And some of the greatest writing that he
did came out of that jail, you see.
It isn't always that physical freedom or prosperity
is the thing that is true deliverance.
And Paul was even able to say, you
know, I wish you were just like I
am to one great leader, except for these
chains.
You see, the freest man in that courtroom
happened to be Paul.
And the true deliverer, the true anointed one,
comes and sets us free.
There's only one way he does it, and
it's spiritually.
There have been many great, wonderful people of
God who were not delivered from death.
Read Hebrews 11.
They were not delivered from being fugitives.
They were not delivered from having to be
in caves, and yet their faith sent them
there.
They were not failures.
Maybe they were in our eyes, but not
in God's.
In fact, he even says the world wasn't
even worthy of them.
But back to John, Jesus doesn't come.
And finally, finally, in the seventh chapter of
Luke, it finally comes home to roost.
Luke chapter 7, verse 19, well, verse 18.
John's disciples told him about all these things,
calling two of them.
He sent them to the Lord to ask,
are you the one who was to come?
Or should we expect someone else?
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
This is the same guy who said, I
have seen and I testify, this is the
Son of God.
Now he's saying, are you the one?
Verse 21.
At that very time, Jesus cured many who
had diseases, sicknesses, and evil spirits, and gave
sight to many who were blind.
So he, Jesus, replied to the messengers, go
back and report to John what you've seen
and heard.
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.
Do you see what's happening?
Jesus doesn't say, go back and tell John
he had better kind of, you know, hitch
things up there and keep his chin up,
man, and be tough.
I've got to have it.
I mean, if he's going to be anything,
he'd better be tough in that jail.
He doesn't do that, does he?
He doesn't say, you go back and tell
John that he's in great danger, man.
If he had such a great revelation from
God, and now he's having this kind of
a problem, he had better watch out.
He doesn't do that, does he?
You know what he does?
He says, go back and tell John the
Spirit is still here.
You had one clue, John.
Remember, when you see the Spirit come down
and remain, that's him.
Tell John the Spirit is still here.
In other words, I am still living out
what you and I both know the Messiah
was supposed to do.
The Messiah came not to merely draw attention
to himself, not to be the great deliverer
from Rome, but to come and be the
one truly others-centered, servant-hearted person.
And look at his clientele, would you?
The poor, the outcast, the oppressed, those who
are in bondage, those who are blind and
don't understand, those who feel out of favor.
That's his clientele.
And so he comes to us as the
true deliverer.
And oh my, if you happen to be
here this morning, and you find yourself seeking
deliverance in some other way, maybe you think
your biggest problem is really financial, or maybe
your biggest problem is even your health, or
your biggest problem is some other thing beside
the sin and the bondage from which he
wishes to release you.
I want you to know that your biggest
problem is the sin.
And there's only one person who can deliver
you from that.
Only one.
The lottery can't.
You win the lottery and you just have
more money to send with.
It's almost like a truck driver who meant
an awful lot to me in my early
days.
He said something I'll never forget.
He said, civilization and education does not make
you better.
Civilization and education will not keep you from
killing someone.
It'll only keep you from eating him after
you've killed him.
So all of the things that we put
our trust in are powerless to do the
very one thing that the great deliverer and
the true deliverer came to do.
And that's to set you free from that
true bondage.
And I want you to know that if
you're in bondage now and you've not asked
him to be lord of your life, the
true messiah, the eternal superman, waits to do
so just for you.
The spirit is still there.
Now, Jesus goes on and makes this interesting
statement.
He says in verse 23 of Luke 7,
blessed is the man who is not offended
in me or who does not fall away
on account of me.
What is he talking about here?
He is just simply saying, blessed is the
man who, when he sees what I am
truly like, does not say, well, you know,
that's not the kind of messiah I had
in mind.
I was hoping that the true messiah would
be born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and would be
a good old American boy, you know, and
just number one kind of guy.
That's not, I just, if he isn't, if
he isn't the mild-mannered Clark Kent who
only needs a phone booth, then I'm just
not interested.
And there's some who are that way.
But Jesus is saying, blessed or happy is
the man who, when he sees what I
am truly like, says, that's him.
Him I will follow.
Some years ago, I was in the city
of Nashville and was doing a seminar, actually,
for a church there and its leadership.
There was one particular chap, I remember him
so well, but he was kind of everyone's
leader type.
I mean, he was well-dressed, he was
smooth, he was tall, he was big, he
was kind of, could sell you anything.
And I come in and I teach on
the servanthood nature of Jesus and the fact
that he was the one truly other-centered
person.
He says, I didn't come to be served,
but to serve.
Jesus wasn't a taker, he was a giver.
Some months, actually, later, the pastor called me
on the phone.
He said, I think I owe you a
report.
Remember when you were with us?
I said, oh yes.
He said, remember so-and-so?
And he named the guy.
I said, oh yeah, you can't forget him.
He said, after that weekend, he went on
a two-week Caribbean cruise.
He said, you ruined it for him.
I said, really?
He said, he spent two weeks at the
rail of that ship, weeping.
Because it so confronted all of his physical,
fleshly, carnal dreams and expectancies, and he realized
that the Jesus that he had been serving,
or thought he was, was not the Jesus
that you had described.
And he said, he also realized that the
Jesus you described was the true one.
And it so wrenched him, because he knew
that he was going to have to choose,
will I serve the true Deliverer, or the
American, or the European, or the Asian Deliverer?
We all do this.
And the pastor said, I'm happy to report
to you that he's serving the true Jesus
now.
And so, I really cannot offer you the
opportunity to follow mild-mannered Clark Kent, waiting
only for the chance to clobber a few
criminals.
Can't offer you that.
I can't offer you a Jesus who defeats
all the bad forces of the world immediately
on the spot.
But I can say to you right now,
that he is the Anointed One, the Deliverer.
And those things that truly hold you, he
will set you free.
Because he is God's Messiah and Anointed One.
So if you've come here and you are
ready to say, that's the one and him
I will follow, then I have good news
for you.
He's here, and he hasn't changed.
The Spirit still remains.
So I'm going to pray now, and you
be thinking about this, because maybe this is
the day that you will say, the bondages
in my life, I give up to you
now, because I believe you are the Anointed
One.
You are now my hero.
Let's pray.
Lord, you really are good to us.
You refuse to let us limit you to
our fleshly conjurings.
You refuse to let us make you less
than what you truly are.
And I sure am glad of that, God,
because everything I could have imagined would not
have been enough to deal with the true
me.
But you come in reality as the Son
of God, exactly like the Father, and designed
by him to do what we desperately need,
and that's to hear the good news, God.
So thank you for setting us free.
Thank you for being here.
We now throw everything on you, because we
know who you truly are, the true hero,
the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One.
Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, that
you are that.
Amen.
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