A lot is known about Jesus. But who was John? And why did Jesus speak so highly of him?
John was the only child of his mother Elizabeth and his father Zacharias, who was a Jewish priest. That means that John was born into that same line of priests from which his father descended. It was unquestionably accepted that John himself would therefore become a priest; a vocation which required extensive education and training from one's youth. At a very early age, John doubtless began to study for the priesthood. He went to school at the Temple in Jerusalem to learn how to read and write, and to commit the books of the Torah to memory, and to learn how to perform a host of rituals and ceremonies connected with Jewish Temple worship.
John's whole career was mapped out for him from the cradle. He would be expected to dress a certain way, to eat certain foods, to be at certain places and at certain times. Most important, he would be expected to think and live a certain way. He would spend his time among a certain class of Jewish leaders and intellectuals--the Temple priests. His friends and playmates were also the sons of priests. John would have spent a very large portion of his time at the large and lavish Temple compound, learning and adopting the lifestyle of those Jewish priests.
But probably sometime in his late teens John began to grow increasingly restless. It was not a restlessness that was due to any distaste nor even dissatisfaction with his vocational calling. On the contrary, John himself was consumed with that calling. But the stirring and discomfort in his spirit, rather, was due to John's growing dissatisfaction with the spiritual poverty of the culture associated with Jewish Temple system. John believed with all his heart in the truth and the teachings of the Old Testament. John believed in the reality of the God of the Bible, and he yearned to experience the fullness of that reality in his own life. As John matured, he evidently perceived more and more of the hypocrisy among many of the Jewish priests--concerning which hypocrisy, Jesus, merely a few years hence from that time, warned his own disciples to beware of.
One day John could no longer withhold from discussing with his parents a decision concerning which he had long been wrestling with. John had decided to discontinue his priestly training. How his parents responded to that decision, it is difficult to guess. Did his mother, perhaps, say something like this?:
"Sure, Johnny, you go ahead and do your own thing, son. Your father and I know that you have a good head on your shoulders and you will do the right thing--even if that seems rather unconventional to us."
Not.
Zacharias and Elizabeth being human parents and wanting what they believed was good and right for their only child--and notwithstanding they were godly people: yet, it is not unreasonable to suppose that John's parents likely responded with no little disappointment, to say the least. Here's how I imagine their conversation, on that day, might have gone:
"What will you do, then, John? Where will you go? How will you provide for yourself?" his Mother pleaded with him.
"Never mind that!" his father exclaimed, "You were to become a Rabbi, a respected teacher of the people! How is your youthful waywardness going to appear to all those who have given so much to you and who have such high expectations of you? And what will they think of this family?!"
Where, indeed, would John go? And what would he do? He wasn't trained for any other occupation. He had no marketable skills. By turning his back on his Temple training, John made himself odious in the eyes of those among whom he had thus far spent his entire life.
John became, probably, something of an outcast, in the eyes of the Jewish priesthood. He soon ended up in the "wilderness of Judea"--a harsh, inhospitable, and very lonely expanse of rocky desert well beyond the environs of all civilization.
John doubtless was often lonely. But he wasn't alone....
"What are you doing out here, boy?" hissed an inaudible and unfamiliar voice. "Aren't you supposed to be in school today? Just who do you think you are, anyway? Do you think you're better than your friends back there? Or is it that you think you're smarter than your teachers? Oh, I get it: you're right, and they are ALL wrong! Ha! What a loser. You could have been somebody, Johnny. You had a great opportunity to become somebody. You could have had influence, respect, wealth. Hey, you might have even been able to do some real good for your community... But you threw all that away, didn't you? And for what? Look at you! You're a real prize: dressed like that! You used to wear the finest linen clothes. Why, you look like you haven't had a bath or shaved in weeks! You used to eat with the princes of Israel, boy! But you traded all that for real food, didn't you? How are you going to eat those locusts, today, boy: raw or roasted? What a loser you are, John. You're chasing rainbows. And where is this God of yours, anyway? Here? among the rocks and scorpions? And if you couldn't find Him in that fabulous Temple in Jerusalem, Johnny, what makes you think you're gonna find Him out here in the desert? By yourself? All by yourself, boy, you are going to discover....what?....the secrets of God's power? Come down from your high-horse. You need to be back there in town looking for a nice girl to marry, and settle down. Real life is not happening out here in this wilderness, but back there where the crowd is. And if you knew anything at all, you would at least know that. Hey, maybe all is not lost to you. You could go back and write a book about your 'journey' of self-discovery! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha....."
How many months, or, more likely, years did John abide in that solitary place, daily seeking God? (How many years was Moses in the wilderness of Midian? And how many years was Joseph a stranger and an outcast in Egypt, before God moved to deliver him from bondage?)
I imagine, too, that after John had long been absent from the Temple, a few of his former classmates became curious about John's whereabouts and his wellbeing. So, they set out to find him. And find him they did, out there--way out there--in the wilderness.....
From that time on, as I suppose, something amazing began to happen. That little handful of John's former friends who went out looking for him, after they found John and spent some time talking with him, were so convicted and inspired within their hearts by those things which John said to them that they began to invite some of their other friends to come with them, from time to time, to visit John at his wilderness camp. Slowly at first, a little band of disciples began to understand and embrace those teachings which were coming from John's soul--a soul which had been thoroughly purged: through a lengthy process of the most profound heart-searching; through intensive seasons of prayer and fasting; through mortal combat with the powers of darkness, which relentlessly attacked his spirit and his body; through extreme social isolation; through deep and protracted meditation in the Word of God.
John never advertised himself. He never went knocking on the doors of synagogues among the villages around Judea, asking for an occasion to speak. He just kept seeking the face of God. Deeper and deeper he went, in his understanding of the mind of God, as the Spirit of God led him, until his own mind was aflame with a holy fire. Slowly at first, the seeds of Revival were sown, albeit in the hearts of only a few men. Then those men--with a newly kindled desire and hope that they, too, might know and walk with the living God, in turn, began to bring others to John and to seek the kingdom of God with him: well beyond the boundaries of what had become a stale and even in some ways an abusive religious system. In God's time, John's solitary campfire became a bonfire shared by many--which even more quickly then became a forest fire that blazed throughout the whole nation of Israel.
John didn't obtain his understanding of God from any seminary. In point of fact, John consciously turned his back on the religious system of his day. He could not escape the battle that raged in his own soul: he wanted nothing more, on the one hand, than to know and to please the Lord; and, on the other hand, he was increasingly distressed by the spiritual emptiness and the open displays of worldliness he observed in the conduct of many of those who served, as well among many of those who supposedly worshipped God, at the Temple in Jerusalem.
John wanted something more than tradition and ritual. He wanted to know God in truth, for himself. And he wanted to know God, for Israel's sake.
If John had feared what others might think of him; if he had surrendered himself to be and to do what others expected of him: we would never have known his name. And the world would still be awaiting the forerunner of Christ.
That same Christ has promised to come, again. It is time for his "forerunner(s)" to appear...
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