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 Festival of John the Baptist has fallen this year in the week which commenced with Trinity Sunday. That circumstance, which has led me to choose this passage, may perhaps suggest some hints for the illustration of it.

I. John the Baptist, we are sometimes told, produced a religious revival in Judæa, like in kind to those which we hear of in America, and sometimes in this country. There is an advantage in such comparisons, in so far as they make us feel that men are essentially the same in one generation as another; the same in the burdens which oppress them; in the evils to which they have yielded; in their craving for a divine message. I do not complain at all of the assumption, that such a message may be heard, and has been heard, in one period and one country as much as in another. The Collect of the Church which speaks of John the Baptist as the model of later ministers, would mean nothing if it were not so; our Lord’s words in the text would mean very little. The more we regard John’s preaching as the type of all common preaching,—the example of what it should be,—the better I am sure it will be for us. And that is one of my reasons for questioning the correctness of the opinion, that there was any essential resemblance between it and that special kind of preaching which aims at awakening what is called a stronger sense of religion in a nation, or a more intense concern about the safety of the individual soul.

Some external resemblances will strike us at once; they are worthy of observation. John had as little apparent claim to be heard as any preacher who should appear at this day on some English moor. He was not known till he spoke; his speech contained his credentials. That commended itself to people of all kinds and degrees; that broke down the distinctions of classes; that could compel men to listen who were immersed in the traffic or pleasures of the world. There were no miracles to establish John’s mission; he had no patrons; it was to the heart of men he appealed; that responded to the appeal. So far there is no advantage on the side of him who drew all Jerusalem, Judæa, and the country beyond Jordan to hear him.

Perhaps one may say there were considerable disadvantages. In most of these modern movements one hears of a considerable amount of machinery which is used to aid, if not to produce, the effect at which the preacher aims. The scene is carefully chosen; all circumstances are called in to heighten it; there is arrangement and co-operation. Such appliances are entirely absent in the other case. The preacher is alone. He has not gone into the wilderness because it is a more impressive place than a town; he has been dwelling there; it has become his home. His dress and food may be unlike those to which citizens are most accustomed; but it is natural to him; it is not unfamiliar to them. They will expect it of an Anchorite, and Anchorites in Palestine were anything but rare. The Essenes were almost as well known as the Sadducees. A friar’s rope and bare feet may excite a moment’s notice in an English village; who would be the least influenced by the sight in Spain or Belgium?

There was nothing, then, in the mere accidents of the preacher to draw crowds; nothing, so far as we can make out, in his manner or the tone of his voice. No doubt they may have been suitable to the words which he delivered; we always expect that they will be; but, if so, the impression which they will make must depend on the quality of those words. Now it is here that one discovers the characteristic difference between John and most of those vehement and successful orators in Protestant or Romanist churches with whom he has been compared. St. John did not come in the wilderness proclaiming that there was a great absence of interest about religion in his time; that it was not cared for as it had been cared for in days gone by. There were no symptoms in Jewish society, whether we derive our impression of it from the Evangelists, or from its own professed historian, which would have warranted such a complaint. It is not made afterwards by our Lord; He did not direct His apostles to make it, when He sent them forth into the different cities and villages into which He was to come. One would gather from His discourses, and from all other indications, that it was a religious age; that if there had been indifference respecting the Scriptures, or the ordinances of worship, the indifference had disappeared. The Law and the Prophets were read and studied. Innumerable questions arising out of them were zealously canvassed. The open deniers of their authority were few. Those who thought that one part of them had more worth than another were in a minority. Herodian statesmen respected their decrees. There might be ignorance and barbarism enough in some districts, but the body of the people were not forgotten. The synagogues were established for their use.

It may be said that this was mere general, national religion; that it had nothing to do with the individual man. The Pharisees would have felt the charge particularly inapplicable to them. The holiness at which they aimed might be false or true. But it was not false because it enjoined certain general practices instead of applying them to specific cases. It was minutely specific. Each man was in danger of violating some law, and so of incurring some divine penalty; each man for himself must ask how he could obtain a probable forgiveness; how he might hope to escape the penalty. Only by a high individual religious practice could he have the least hope of attaining any blessings in the world to come. And that world was far more constantly presented to the fears and expectations of Jews in this period of their history than in any which had preceded it.

Religion then had revived in Palestine before the time of the Baptist; if he had said that it had not, and that he came to revive it, there would have been no answer in the conscience to his words; all Jerusalem and Judæa would not have gone out to his baptism. The message which he brought was especially to those who were most busy with all the occupations, professions, duties of it; not to them exclusively; not to them more encouragingly or hopefully than to those who were living indifferent, even reckless lives; but to them as sharing the same Covenant with all upon whom they had looked down and from whom they were standing apart, to them as entitled to claim the common hope of Israelites—as having no other which they could claim, as not having a charter of exemption from any terrors which were coming upon Israel.

Yes! John came preaching the Baptism of Repentance for the Remission of Sins to all who wanted Repentance and Remission of Sins. And men in that religious age felt this want, and felt also that no religion which they possessed had met the want. They did not prove to themselves by arguments that they were sinners, or that they deserved God’s wrath. There was in them a sense of wrong—palpable, direct wrong. Parents, who passed for very respectable and righteous, knew in their inmost hearts that they had not done what they might have done, and were bound to do, for their children. Children, who might be much more religious than their fathers, felt that they had not reverenced them or obeyed them, as God’s law commanded that they should. Those who had never been suspected of false swearing, who had never been guilty of light swearing, knew that they had taken God’s name in vain when they seemed to be honouring it most. With what frivolous talk some knew they had demolished the reputation of their neighbours; with what covetous, envious eyes others had feasted on their possessions. Such violations of the commandments stood out in clear sunlight before the consciences of those who had committed no overt acts on the peace of society,—who passed for its creditable, devout members. Was it different with those who knew they had stolen,—that they had broken the marriage vow, or caused others to break it—that they had committed foul and secret murder? On each and all sat a weight,—at times scarcely felt, at times intolerably oppressive; but one that crushed the spirit, made work insincere, rest impossible. What did it profit to ask, “Have others more or less of this pain; hast thou less or more of it to expect hereafter?” There it was; to be rid of it, or of that which caused it, was the great necessity. The most discriminating judge of the criminality of different offences, the most benignant flatterer of the particular transgressor, could do nothing for him; only one, who said, “Thou and the evil may part company, it may be severed from thee as far as the east is from the west,” could afford him any consolation.

This was the message that came from the Wilderness, which the Baptism in the river Jordan explained and confirmed. Whence it came John took no pains to prove. He had no testimonies of his commission, but the testimonies which the hearts and consciences of men and women bore to it. He said, “It is God Who calls to repentance; it is God Who sends away sins. This Baptism is His, not mine.” They said, “It is God Who has made us know our sins. It is God Who stirs us to repentance. It is God Who separates between us and evil.”

There were some who saw nothing of this in the Baptism. They came to it because other people came to it; because they could not tell that it might not have some virtue; because they were glad that irreligious men—people of the lower orders who had led bad lives—should have this stimulus and motive to be more decorous. For that kind of men, vulgar preachers like John, outward signs like Baptism, might no doubt be of much use. These leaders of Jewish schools and sects were those with whom John dealt so rudely. These he asked, “Who had bidden them flee from the wrath to come?” He signified to them very distinctly that a day of the Lord was at hand; a day which would be in some very terrible sense a day of wrath; a day which would reach the whole land, from the highest to the lowest; a day in which no one would fare better than another, except so far as he was more simply trusting in the Lord and Deliverer of Israel, and rejoicing in His appearing. For that this coming day, this day of suffering, of judgment, of wrath, was a day to be desired, a day that would fulfil the longings of men as well as their fears, was implied in all John’s discourse. He was preparing the way for a Lord Whose shoe’s latchet he was not worthy to unloose. This Baptism with water was to inaugurate a higher baptism with the Holy Ghost and with fire.

II. How could these characteristics of John the Baptist have earned for him the praise, “Among them that are born of women none is greater”? We should surely have thought that Elijah was greater; that Isaiah was greater. He spoke Who knew, and we may be permitted to trace by the light of Scripture at least some of the principles of His judgment. If John had urged his countrymen to be religious, or to take care of their souls, he might have been greater than previous prophets; but he would have been so utterly unlike them in language and spirit, that any comparison between them would have been impossible. Elijah seemed to Jezebel a denouncer of religion, one who was putting the souls of the people in jeopardy—because he called on them to choose between Baal and the Lord God of Israel; because he mocked the priests; because at last he slew them and overthrew their altars. Isaiah, writing in Jerusalem, where there was no Baal worship, where a religious revival and reformation had taken place, yet exclaims, “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; each is a witness of evils that are destroying a nation. The question between Baal and Jehovah was the question between a God of Power and a God of Righteousness. That was the question which was also at issue between Isaiah and those who were keeping the new moons and the Sabbaths in the days of Hezekiah. It was not a God Who sought to deliver His creatures from doing evil, Who was teaching them to do well, that these religious people were seeking after. They, as much as the servants of Ahab’s court, were bowing down to a Being Who they hoped would excuse them from doing well, would allow them to do ill, if they paid Him sufficient court and homage. And this again was John’s contention with the Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians of his generation. Their religion needed to be shaken, not to be cultivated. It was concealing, not uprooting their moral corruptions. It was giving a sanction to the social evils under which the nation was crumbling. It was hastening on that divine wrath and vengeance which would lay the holy city and the Temple in ruins. But it had not accomplished its purpose of banishing God from His own world. He was still speaking to men, in His own clear, mighty voice, however confused and false might be the cries which they sent up to Him. He was still fighting with sin, if they were persuading Him to overlook it and tolerate it. He was still turning men from the sin in which they had been lost and buried, to Himself. He was still making the conscience free from that burden which He had taught it to groan under and to confess. He was preparing the perfect manifestation of His own nature, which should also be the manifestation of His relation to men, and of His victory over evil.

John’s voice in the Wilderness was like the voice of every previous prophet, who had said, “Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God;” who had said, “The grass withereth, and the flower fadeth, but the Word of our God shall stand for ever;” who had said to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!” But John’s voice was clearer, stronger, than that of all who had gone before. He gathered their utterances into one simple, grand utterance, that could reach to all corners of that land, and at last of all lands; that met the wants of his own time; that would meet the wants of all human beings in generations to come. He interpreted the past by the present; he showed how the future would be the interpreter of both. He made it evident that in one period or another a Living God, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, must be the Reformer and Restorer of nations and of human society,—that no system, political, philosophical, religious, ever can be. Among them that are born of women, none ever had spoken more directly the word of God to the heart of men; none had ever unfolded the purpose of God more completely: who then could be greater than he?

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 world.

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 were regarded as sons of God, in the only-begotten Son. The first Baptism declared that the Kingdom of Heaven was near, and was about to declare itself. The second Baptism admitted men into it. The first was in the name of the God of Abraham, and Moses, and David,—of the Divine Root, and Lawgiver, and King of Israel. The second Baptism was in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, that which was to join in one all the families of the earth. What our Lord tells us is, that the least in His Kingdom of Heaven, the least who is sealed with His Name, is greater than the greatest Prophet of the earlier world.

You will see that if John’s words were true,—if he was the herald of a Baptism far diviner than his own,—it must needs be so. His witness and influence depended upon nothing in himself: they were strongest the more weak he was,—the more their power was felt to be God’s, and not his. Because that could not be felt entirely by his disciples, because his voice still sounded as if it rose from the earth, not as if it came from Heaven; he must decrease, that One Who spoke only the words of God, manifested only the life of God, might increase, and might fill the whole space which he 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, till he had gone away. Then, when His Father had revealed Him, and He had revealed the Father,—when the Spirit had come in Whom they are united, Who reveals them to men, Who knits together the hearts of men that they may receive the Revelation,—then would God indeed be all in all, men would be the living voluntary members and instruments of that body through which He acts and speaks. For a man to be any, even the most insignificant, member of this body,—to know himself as such,—is to have an honour and a knowledge which John whilst he was on earth could not possess, which he died that he might attain.

A very wonderful and very awful recollection, which we need to preserve continually, and to apply in a multitude of different cases. I reminded you last week that all our Sundays, henceforth till Advent, are Sundays after Trinity, and that each is intended to bring out some practical truth which the Mystery involves in reference to our common life. To-day I wish to seize one of these truths. We are to be, as John the Baptist was, preachers of Repentance. We are to preach, like him, of a Baptism for the Remission of Sins. We are to preach, like him, of a coming day of the Lord.

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