By Steven Lambert
John the Baptist’s unorthodox, unique, and unprecedented forerunner ministry burst forth suddenly, unexpectedly, and dramatically, to say the least:
Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip was tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness. And he came into all the district around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins; as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, “THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS, ‘MAKE READY THE WAY OF THE LORD, MAKE HIS PATHS STRAIGHT. ‘EVERY RAVINE WILL BE FILLED, AND EVERY MOUNTAIN AND HILL WILL BE BROUGHT LOW; THE CROOKED WILL BECOME STRAIGHT, AND THE ROUGH ROADS SMOOTH; AND ALL FLESH WILL SEE THE SALVATION OF GOD.’” So he began saying to the crowds who were going out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? “Therefore bear fruits in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father,’ for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham. “Indeed the axe is already laid at the root of the trees; so every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”[1]
In bringing forth John’s ministry, God ingeniously, if you will, circumvented or bypassed every existing authority structure and system at the time—civil and religious—which demonstrates this is the reason the Holy Spirit inspired Luke to set the scene as He did. Luke specified that regarding the extant civil government in place at the time, a) Tiberius Caesar was in the fifth year of his monarchical reign over the Roman Empire; b) Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea; c) Herod was tetrarch of the region of Galilee: d) Herod’s brother, Philip, was tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and e) Lysanias was tetrarch of the region of Abilene. Regarding the religious authority hierarchy in place at the time, John’s ministry emerged during the high priesthoods of Annas and Caiaphas.
This circumvention of the existing “authorities,” emphatically illustrates that while God in His Word categorically states that “Every person is to be in subjection to the governing (civil) authorities,” yet the reason for that is “For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.” [2] All authority whether on earth, i.e., civil, in the heavenlies, or in the Spirit realm, ultimately originates with God, for He, and He alone, IS the ultimate authority and therefore ultimate source of legitimate authority! So, because God is the ultimate authority of the universe, He has the authority and can legally and legitimately exercise that authority to do whatever He desires to do, including bypassing or circumventing existing authority structures to institute whatever He desires to institute—i.e., His purposes and plans. In this case it was the forerunner ministry of John-the-Baptist. What God was about to do could not inure from any of the existing systems of the world or any human agency, but rather it had to be the direct work of God Himself! God was establishing a completely new order of things! That new order is known as “The Kingdom of God” on Earth! And the King of that Kingdom (every kingdom must have a king) is King Jesus, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords!
The activation of John-the-Baptist’s ministry required that God even intervene in the circumstances of John’s birth, in that his father, Zacharias, was a priest born into the division of Abijah of the tribe of Levi, whose wife, Elizabeth, was of the female descendants (daughters) of Aaron, the brother of Moses, the original high priest:
In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zacharias, of the division of Abijah; and he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. They were both righteous in the sight of God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and requirements of the Lord. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and they were both advanced in years. Now it happened that while he was performing his priestly service before God in the appointed order of his division, according to the custom of the priestly office, he was chosen by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And the whole multitude of the people were in prayer outside at the hour of the incense offering. And an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing to the right of the altar of incense. Zacharias was troubled when he saw the angel, and fear gripped him. But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your petition has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will give him the name John. “You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth. “For he will be great in the sight of the Lord; and he will drink no wine or liquor, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit while yet in his mother’s womb. “And he will turn many of the sons of Israel back to the Lord their God. “It is he who will go as a forerunner before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, TO TURN THE HEARTS OF THE FATHERS BACK TO THE CHILDREN, and the disobedient to the attitude of the righteous, so as to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” Zacharias said to the angel, “How will I know this for certain? For I am an old man and my wife is advanced in years.” The angel answered and said to him, “I am Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. “And behold, you shall be silent and unable to speak until the day when these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their proper time.” The people were waiting for Zacharias, and were wondering at his delay in the temple. But when he came out, he was unable to speak to them; and they realized that he had seen a vision in the temple; and he kept making signs to them, and remained mute. When the days of his priestly service were ended, he went back home. After these days Elizabeth his wife became pregnant, and she kept herself in seclusion for five months, saying, “This is the way the Lord has dealt with me in the days when He looked with favor upon me, to take away my disgrace among men.”[3]
The system for annually choosing priests from the “sons” or male descendants of Levi to perform the sacerdotal temple duties was “by lot” by rotation in which eligible priests—those who had not previously served—drew some sort of markers, a certain one of which was the marker that identified the priest chosen to serve in that capacity. Even here we see the providential intervention of God, in that the lot fell upon the exact person God had ordained to serve in the priestly role of the burning of the incense at this, the most crucial intersection in Creation history! There could be no variance here; rather at this very particular time, everything, every detail of the particulars of this circumstance, would be, had to be, exactly perfect!
God had chosen a certain man, whose wife was a certain woman of the progeny of Aaron, the first High Priest, who would give birth to a certain male child that was not just an ordinary or common male but was a prophet, a prophet who was “more than a prophet.”[4] And the ministry of this prophet would be that of a forerunner, to prepare the way for the coming or the manifestation of the long-awaited Messiah!
This prophet would in fact be the cousin of that Messiah!
This prophet’s mother, who was a bloodline descendant of Aaron, Moses’ brother, would be the blood-aunt of the Messiah’s biological mother!
This prophet’s biological father would be from the bloodline of the division of Abijah of the tribe of Levi (the tribe of Israel’s priests)!
This prophet would be the prophesied “Elijah to come!”[5]
Everything that God needed to be perfectly aligned for this, the most momentous moment in Creation history, was indeed in all aspects perfectly aligned!
Even the child’s name that God had ordained for this child-prophet who would be procreated through this priest and his priestly wife could not be left to their whim, but rather had to be designated by God Himself, for the name of the child bore the description of his calling and ministry: to be the forerunner to prepare the way for and identify the Messiah, “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” who at precisely the “right time”[6] in Creational history would die for the ungodly to redeem “whosoever” will receive and believe upon Him.
Notice the passage states that John came: “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” His Spirit-anointed, fiery, soul-piercing, preaching moved his Hebrew hearers to the Godly sorrow that leads to repentance,[7] which repentance was required in order to receive forgiveness from God of their personal sins and trespasses, as it is for everyone who seeks forgiveness of and fellowship with God. Penitents who came to this juncture of real repentance, John would baptize in the iconic waters of the Jordon River, the symbol of the Jewish nation’s passing through in their exodus from their former bondage of slavery to the Egyptians into the freedom of the Land of Milk and Honey, Beulah Land, The Promised Land, the territory illicitly occupied by the trespassing Canaanites, Canaan, which territory God had set aside and designated for the Israelites to inhabit as an inheritance as the descendants of Abraham.
The spies Moses sent out at the command of the Lord to survey the territory when the Israelites finally arrived there after forty years of wandering in the wilderness, reported that “the Canaanites are living by the sea and by the side of the Jordan.” Canaan consists of the territory west of the Jordan River bounded on the west by the “Great Sea,”[8] known today as the Mediterranean Sea. God Himself described to Moses the exact borders demarcating the territory of the Promised Land:
Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Command the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘When you enter the land of Canaan, this is the land that shall fall to you as an inheritance, even the land of Canaan according to its borders. ‘Your southern sector shall extend from the wilderness of Zin along the side of Edom, and your southern border shall extend from the end of the Salt Sea eastward. ‘Then your border shall turn direction from the south to the ascent of Akrabbim and continue to Zin, and its termination shall be to the south of Kadesh-barnea; and it shall reach Hazaraddar and continue to Azmon. ‘The border shall turn direction from Azmon to the brook of Egypt, and its termination shall be at the sea. ‘As for the western border, you shall have the Great Sea, that is, its coastline; this shall be your west border. ‘And this shall be your north border: you shall draw your border line from the Great Sea to Mount Hor. ‘You shall draw a line from Mount Hor to the Lebo-hamath, and the termination of the border shall be at Zedad; and the border shall proceed to Ziphron, and its termination shall be at Hazar-enan. This shall be your north border. ‘For your eastern border you shall also draw a line from Hazar-enan to Shepham, and the border shall go down from Shepham to Riblah on the east side of Ain; and the border shall go down and reach to the slope on the east side of the Sea of Chinnereth. ‘And the border shall go down to the Jordan and its termination shall be at the Salt Sea. This shall be your land according to its borders all around.’” So Moses commanded the sons of Israel, saying, “This is the land that you are to apportion by lot among you as a possession, which the LORD has commanded to give to the nine and a half tribes. “For the tribe of the sons of Reuben have received theirs according to their fathers’ households, and the tribe of the sons of Gad according to their fathers’ households, and the half-tribe of Manasseh have received their possession. “The two and a half tribes have received their possession across the Jordan opposite Jericho, eastward toward the sunrising.”[9]
Though the Hebrews were the inheritors and owners of the entire Land of Canaan in that Jehovah had given it to the Hebrew Patriarch, Abraham, they never to this day completely conquered and dispossessed the Canaanites from the territory. Circa 1250 BC the united Kingdom of Israel was established when the Israelites prevailed upon the prophet Samuel and ultimately Jehovah God to appoint them a king, a human monarch, “like all the (other) nations,”[10] who would rule as the singular potentate over the nation.[11] The originally united kingdom that was established in Canaan, following the death of Solomon, became a divided kingdom, consisting of the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah.
[1] Luke 3:1-9; Caps part of the text indicating quote from Old Testament Scripture.
[2] Rom. 13:1; parenthetic explanation added
[3] Luke 1:5-25
[4] Mat. 11:9; Luke 7:26
[5] Mat. 11:14; Mal. 4:5-6
[6] Rom. 5:6
[7] 2 Cor. 7:9-10
[8] Num. 34:6
[9] Num. 34:1-15
[10] 1 Sam. 8:5
[11] 1 Sam. 8:1-9
This article is an excerpt of Dr. Lambert’s soon-to-be-published book, NOW FAITH IS! — Faith That Works! Be sure to subscribe to the email list to receive notification when the book is available for purchase!
Dr. Steven Lambert was ordained in 1977 and holds several earned graduate/post-graduate degrees. Over more than four decades in ministry, he has served as a pastor, radio/TV host, adjunct-professor, Board Certified Doctoral Diplomate Christian Therapist/Counselor, and a speaker/commentator on a range of social, political, and theological issues, particularly as a recognized authority on the matter of ecclesiastical authoritarian abuse. He is the founder/Overseer of Ephesians Four Network (ephesiansfour.net) and its subsidiary, Ephesians Four Network of Deliverance Counselors (efndc.ephesiansfour.net). Dr. Lambert authored several books (catalog at realtruthpublications.com), many published articles, and is the founder/editor of Spirit Life Magazine (spiritlifemag.com). His bio, extensive blog, and scheduling information are available on his ministry website at: http://www.slm.org. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
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