Why We are Greater Than the Greatest of the Prophets

“Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”—Matthew xi. 11.

The passage: Jesus says that among those born of women no one has risen who is greater than John the Baptist, yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

The Festival of John the Baptist has fallen this year in the week that began with Trinity Sunday. That is why I chose this passage, and it may help us understand it.

I. We are sometimes told that John the Baptist produced a religious revival in Judæa, like those we hear of in America and sometimes here. Such comparisons are useful because they remind us that men are the same in every generation: the same burdens, the same evils, the same craving for a divine message. I do not object to the assumption that such a message may be heard in one age and country as well as another. The Church’s Collect, which calls John the model of later ministers, would mean nothing otherwise, and our Lord’s words in the text would mean very little. The more we take John’s preaching as the pattern of all common preaching, the better. That is one reason I doubt that it resembled the kind of preaching that aims to awaken a stronger sense of religion in a nation, or a more intense concern for the safety of the individual soul.

Some external resemblances are worth noting. John had as little apparent claim to be heard as a preacher appearing today on an English moor. He was unknown until he spoke, and his speech carried its own credentials. It won people of every kind, broke down class distinctions, and compelled those absorbed in business or pleasure to listen. He had no miracles and no patrons. He appealed to the heart, and the heart answered. So far, a modern revivalist has no advantage over the man who drew all Jerusalem, Judæa and the country beyond Jordan.

One might say John was at a disadvantage. Modern movements usually employ a good deal of machinery to help produce the effect: the scene is carefully chosen, circumstances are marshalled, and there is arrangement and co-operation. None of this was present with John. He was alone. He had not gone to the wilderness because it was more impressive than a town; he lived there, and it was his home. His dress and food may have differed from the citizens’, but they were natural to him and not unfamiliar to his hearers. They would expect them of an Anchorite, and Anchorites in Palestine were common; the Essenes were almost as well known as the Sadducees. A friar’s rope and bare feet might draw a moment’s notice in an English village, but who would be moved by the sight in Spain or Belgium?

So nothing in the mere accidents of the preacher drew the crowds, nor, so far as we can tell, did his manner or tone of voice. These probably suited his words, but then the impression depended on the quality of the words. Here is the characteristic difference between John and the vehement, successful orators in Protestant or Romanist churches with whom he is compared. John did not come into the wilderness proclaiming that people had lost interest in religion and no longer cared for it as they once had. Nothing in Jewish society, whether we learn of it from the Evangelists or from its own historian, would have warranted that complaint. Our Lord never makes it, and He did not tell His apostles to make it when He sent them into the cities and villages. His discourses and other indications suggest a religious age. If there had been indifference to the Scriptures or to worship, it had passed. The Law and the Prophets were read and studied, and countless questions arising from them were eagerly debated. Few openly denied their authority, and few thought one part worth more than another. Herodian statesmen respected their decrees. There might be ignorance and barbarism in some districts, but the people at large were not forgotten; synagogues were set up for them.

It may be said that this was only general, national religion with nothing to do with the individual. The Pharisees would have found the charge especially inapplicable. Their holiness might be false or true, but it was not false for enjoining general practices rather than specific ones, for it was minutely specific. Each man might break some law and incur some divine penalty, and each had to ask for himself how to obtain probable forgiveness and escape the penalty. Only by a high individual religious practice could he hope for any blessing in the world to come. And that world was presented to the fears and hopes of Jews more constantly in this period than in any before.

Religion had therefore already revived in Palestine before the Baptist. Had he said it had not, and that he came to revive it, his words would have found no answer in the conscience, and all Jerusalem and Judæa would not have gone out to his baptism. His message was especially for those most busy with religion’s occupations, professions and duties. It was not for them exclusively, nor with more encouragement than for the indifferent and reckless. It was for them as sharing the same Covenant with all those they looked down on and stood apart from. They could claim only the common hope of Israelites, with no exemption from the terrors coming upon Israel.

Yes, John came preaching the Baptism of Repentance for the Remission of Sins to all who needed repentance and remission. In that religious age people felt this need, and felt that no religion they possessed had met it. They did not argue themselves into believing they were sinners deserving God’s wrath. They had a sense of plain, direct wrong. Parents who passed for respectable and righteous knew inwardly that they had not done for their children what they could and should have done. Children, perhaps more religious than their fathers, felt they had not honoured or obeyed them as God’s law commanded. Men never suspected of false or light swearing knew they had taken God’s name in vain just when they seemed to honour it most. Some knew with what frivolous talk they had demolished their neighbours’ reputations; others, with what covetous, envious eyes they had feasted on their neighbours’ possessions. These violations stood out in clear sunlight before the consciences of people who had committed no overt act against social peace and passed for its creditable, devout members. Was it different for those who knew they had stolen, broken the marriage vow or caused others to break it, or committed foul and secret murder? A weight sat on all of them, sometimes scarcely felt, sometimes intolerably heavy, but always crushing the spirit, making work insincere and rest impossible. What good did it do to ask, “Have others more of this pain than I, or less to expect hereafter?” There it was, and the great necessity was to be rid of it, or of what caused it. The most discriminating judge of the gravity of offences, and the most kindly flatterer of the offender, could do nothing. Only someone who could say, “You and the evil may part company; it may be removed from you as far as the east is from the west,” could console him.

This was the message from the Wilderness, which the Baptism in the Jordan explained and confirmed. John took no pains to prove where it came from. His only testimonies were those the hearts and consciences of men and women gave. He said, “It is God Who calls to repentance and sends sins away. This Baptism is His, not mine.” They said, “It is God Who has made us know our sins, stirs us to repentance, and separates us from evil.”

Some saw nothing of this in the Baptism. They came because others came, because it might have some virtue, and because they were glad that irreligious people of the lower orders, who had led bad lives, should have this stimulus to be more decorous. For such people, they thought, vulgar preachers like John and outward signs like Baptism might be very useful. These were the leaders of Jewish schools and sects whom John treated so roughly. He asked them who had bidden them flee from the wrath to come. He told them plainly that a day of the Lord was at hand, in some terrible sense a day of wrath, reaching the whole land from highest to lowest. No one would fare better than another except by trusting more simply in Israel’s Lord and Deliverer and rejoicing in His appearing. All John’s discourse implied that this day of suffering, judgment and wrath was to be desired, since it would fulfil men’s longings as well as their fears. He was preparing the way for a Lord whose shoe’s latchet he was not worthy to unloose. His Baptism with water was to inaugurate a higher baptism with the Holy Ghost and with fire.

II. How could these characteristics earn John the praise, “Among them that are born of women none is greater”? We would have thought Elijah or Isaiah greater. He who spoke knew, and by the light of Scripture we may trace some of the principles of His judgment. If John had merely urged his countrymen to be religious, or to take care of their souls, he might have been greater than earlier prophets, but he would have been so unlike them in language and spirit that comparison would be impossible. Elijah seemed to Jezebel a denouncer of religion, endangering the people’s souls, because he made them choose between Baal and the Lord God of Israel, mocked the priests, and finally slew them and overthrew their altars. Isaiah wrote in Jerusalem, where there was no Baal worship and a religious revival and reformation had taken place, yet he cries, “Bring no more vain oblations. Incense is an abomination to Me. Your new moons and your Sabbaths My soul hateth. I am weary to bear them. Cease to do evil. Learn to do well.” Each is a stern moralist and a witness against evils destroying a nation. The question between Baal and Jehovah was between a God of Power and a God of Righteousness. The same question stood between Isaiah and those who kept the new moons and Sabbaths under Hezekiah. These religious people were not seeking a God who would deliver them from doing evil and teach them to do well. Like Ahab’s courtiers, they bowed to a Being they hoped would excuse them from doing well, and allow them to do ill, if they paid Him enough court. This was John’s contention with the Pharisees, Sadducees and Herodians of his day. Their religion needed to be shaken, not cultivated. It concealed their moral corruptions instead of uprooting them, sanctioned the social evils under which the nation was crumbling, and hastened the divine wrath that would lay the holy city and Temple in ruins. But it had not succeeded in banishing God from His own world. He still spoke to men in His own clear, mighty voice, however confused and false the cries they sent up to Him. He still fought sin while they persuaded Him to overlook it. He still turned men from the sin in which they were buried, to Himself, and freed the conscience from the burden He had taught it to groan under and confess. He was preparing the perfect manifestation of His own nature, which would also manifest His relation to men and His victory over evil.

John’s voice in the Wilderness was like that of every earlier prophet who said, “Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God,” or “The grass withereth, and the flower fadeth, but the Word of our God shall stand for ever,” or to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!” But it was clearer and stronger than all before it. He gathered their utterances into one simple, grand utterance that could reach every corner of that land and finally of all lands, met the wants of his own time, and would meet those of every later generation. He interpreted the past by the present and showed that the future would interpret both. He made it evident that in every period a Living God, the same yesterday, today and for ever, must be the Reformer and Restorer of nations and society, and that no system, political, philosophical or religious, ever can be. Among those born of women, none ever spoke God’s word more directly to men’s hearts or unfolded God’s purpose more completely. Who then could be greater?

III. “Notwithstanding,” our Lord adds, “he that is least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he.” The Baptism of Repentance wound up the old world. The Baptism of the Holy Ghost introduced the new.

John’s Baptism spoke of an age in which men were regarded as servants of God, but only as born of women. The new Baptism spoke of an age in which men are regarded as sons of God in the only-begotten Son. The first declared that the Kingdom of Heaven was near and about to declare itself; the second admitted men into it. The first was in the name of the God of Abraham, Moses and David, the Divine Root, Lawgiver and King of Israel. The second was in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, which was to unite all the families of the earth. Our Lord tells us that the least in His Kingdom, the least who is sealed with His Name, is greater than the greatest Prophet of the earlier world.

If John’s words were true, and he heralded a Baptism far diviner than his own, this must be so. His witness and influence depended on nothing in himself; they were strongest the weaker he was, and the more their power was felt to be God’s. His disciples could not fully feel that, and his voice still sounded as if it rose from earth, not from Heaven. So he must decrease, so that One who spoke only God’s words and manifested only God’s life might increase and fill the whole space that John and the earlier prophets had partially and by turns occupied. But the Divine Prophet could not be felt to fill that space, to fill all things, to be the perfect Son, until John had gone away. Then the Father would reveal Him and He would reveal the Father, and the Spirit would come, in whom they are united, who reveals them to men and knits men’s hearts together to receive the Revelation. Then God would indeed be all in all, and men would be the living, voluntary members and instruments of the body through which He acts and speaks. To be any member of this body, even the most insignificant, and to know oneself as such, is an honour and knowledge John could not have while on earth, and which he died to attain.

This is a wonderful and awful recollection, which we need to keep and apply in many different cases. I reminded you last week that all our Sundays until Advent are Sundays after Trinity, and that each is meant to bring out some practical truth the Mystery holds for our common life. Today I want to take up one of these truths. We are to be preachers of Repentance, as John was. Like him, we are to preach a Baptism for the Remission of Sins, and a coming day of the Lord.

The least of us may do all this as John could not, provided we remember what Baptism we and our hearers have received, and have some slight, growing impression of the Name into which we are baptized. That remembrance must make us feel, as John felt, that the position of men brought into covenant and communion with God is a grand one, carrying great responsibilities. Like him, we must urge men to confess, and must confess ourselves, how little we have remembered those responsibilities and how ill we have met them. In urging this confession we may know, as surely as John did, that we speak as God would have us speak, in His words and not ours. We may be sure we are speaking exactly what men need to hear, which would give them the most unutterable relief if they heard and acted on it. But we shall also know what John could know only imperfectly: that every call to Repentance is a message from a Father, coming through a Son and made effectual by a Spirit. Every promise of Remission is an assurance given to the children of a Family through an Elder Brother, who has entered into their sorrows, borne their sins, and given them a Spirit who can perfectly divide the evil in them from the good. The day of the Lord we proclaim will manifest the God whose one Name is Love, in contrast to all hateful and dividing powers, as a consuming fire that will destroy them and their works. To proclaim the Father and the Son is to lay a foundation for righteousness in fathers and reverence in children, and to proclaim the Spirit is to keep the distinctness of Relations from ever interfering with the oneness of our human Fellowship. Lastly, John forbade Jews to say, “We have Abraham to our father,” because God could raise up children to Abraham out of the stones. So we must forbid ourselves and all Christians to boast of our Baptism and privileges, since God can raise up, out of the hardest and most hopeless tribes of the earth, witnesses who will worship and glorify, with loving and united hearts, the Name we have often turned into a symbol of Strife and Enmity.