Doug Van Pelt

I would do anything for love...but I wouldn't do that

At the end of Matthew's Gospel, we read about the resurrection of Christ, how the two Mary's went to the tomb and found an angel, who told them that Jesus had risen. The soldiers were pulled aside by the chief priests (who at this point should've repented and become followers of the risen Jesus) and paid big bucks to them to keep their mouths shut about the angel, the earthquake, etc, and instead repeat a story about the disciples coming to steal a body away. Talk about ridiculous stories...

Mark's Gospel starts right in with the action about John the Baptist. My pastor has recently been teaching out of the first chapter of Mark, and he mentioned some interesting things.

First of all, he mentioned that Scripture reveals that John the Baptist didn't know that Jesus was the Messiah until later, so his comments in Matthew 3 about, "You're the Man!"

"No, YOU are the man!"

(just kidding) but they did argue about how John thought that Jesus should baptize him and not he baptize Jesus. Jesus told him to "permit it at this time." So, if it's true that John didn't know that Jesus was the Messiah at that point, why did he act like he shouldn't baptize Jesus? The answer is cool: because he knew Him. Even though Jesus had not been revealed to John as the Messiah, they were related and the reputation of Jesus must've been that He was a "righteous dude," and John probably made his argument based on that alone -- plain old personal goodness -- personal "holiness" -- a consistent "walk" that impressed those around.

One of the comments that John made about the one coming after him was that he was not worthy to untie the sandals of this person. Apparently, in those days slaves were to do anything for their masters, but they would stop short of untying their master's sandals. It must've been gross to get that close to someone's stinky feet -- someone who walked everwhere on dusty, dirty roads. This was just too low to go, and slaves weren't even forced to do it. That is how unworthy John was making himself out to be in comparison to the Messiah -- that he wasn't even worthy to do the most degrading, humiliating task for this Person.

Wow.

I am turning over a new leaf today. I am endeavoring to wait until 4pm to check my email. This is so I will control my work and progress on the magazine, instead of being "enslaved" by my inbox. Here's hoping it frees me up to accomplish much more on a daily basis. I'm tired of working real hard but not feeling like I'm accomplishing much. This is my solution to that problem. I hope it works.

Posted by Doug Van Pelt at October 10, 2005 08:44 AM