out of the desert (John 2)

ADULT BIBLE STORIES: LIFE OF JESUS
OUT OF THE DESERT
(John 2)

John was an ascetic. He lived in the desert, ate locusts and wild honey and wore rough clothing.  He never as the kind of guy who liked fun.

It wasn’t that he was stuffy or anything like that. He was a great guy. And you could truly feel the anointing of God on him, especially when he began speaking of the Kingdom of God.

It was that he was just so severe in his lifestyle. He was, after all part of the Essenes, a severe bunch of people. They were married like normal people, and even had kids. But their whole life was one of self-denial. He did a lot of fasting and praying, so he was a good bit on the lean side.

He was burned almost black from the sun. And he looked so intense. It was kind of scary when he would get going in his preaching. He was not the kind of guy that you wanted to go against.

For one thing, he was strong, like a lot of those people in the desert. Theirs was somewhat of a hardscrabble life and they worked hard at everything they did. Their kids had the strongest work ethic you ever saw kids have. They were just trained that way.

Andrew had never seen anyone like John. He knew that if John were to announce that he was the Messiah, no one would be surprised.

That was why it surprised him so much when John plain out denied it. Someone asked him as he was baptizing in the Jordan. “Are you the Messiah?”

John just replied that he was not, that the one coming after him was so much greater than he was that he wouldn’t even feel worthy to help him put his sandals on. He also said that where he baptized with water, this man coming after him would baptize with fire.

That surprised a lot of people. They really expected him to be the Messiah. Now what would they do?

Andrew and James stayed anyway. John was as close to an old-fashioned prophet as they had
ever seen. They had read about people like him in the scriptures.

Elijah came to mind immediately in almost everybody’s thoughts. He looked physically like one would imagine Elijah looking, he acted like Elijah, he preached like a prophet, for sure.

Maybe he was. The scriptures had ended with Elijah being promised, then the Lord had shut up his revelation almost 400 years ago.

Maybe so. If he was, that meant that the Messiah wasn’t far away.

It surprised him one day, as John was baptizing and he saw a man coming. John said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.”

The man didn’t look like anyone out of the ordinary. John looked a lot more like a Messiah than this guy.

On the other hand, there was something about him, some indefinable quality, a certain charisma.

He came out to John in the river along with a bunch of other people. But John stopped in front of him and looked – humble, Andrew guessed. He never had seen John defer to anyone before. But he sure did to this man.

Then he said something really strange. “I ought to be baptized by you.”

“No,” the man said, “this is what is supposed to be to fulfill the prophecies.”

John did baptize him, but looked so uncomfortable. After the baptism, something happened. It sounded like thunder, but John was dumbstruck. No one could figure out why. John had seen something no one else has seen.

After the man left, John went back to his home in a daze and just sat for a while. When his disciples asked him what had happened, he said, “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God.”

What did that mean? Andrew and James and the other disciples were not sure. For one thing, they were so young. They didn’t have the grounding in stuff like John did. They just didn’t understand.

The next day, they went back to the river. Some of the disciples were baptizing. You could tell John had been severely impacted by what happened yesterday.

The man came walking by again. He nodded at John and John said, “Look! The Lamb of God!”

He looked at his disciples and told them to go. Go where, they asked? Go to him. And then he turned and walked away.

So Andrew and James went to the man. The other disciples just stood there in confusion. They really didn’t know what to do.

As they walked up, the man asked them what they wanted. Andrew said, “Rabbi, where are you staying?”

He wasn’t sure why he asked that. But he had to ask something didn’t he? Otherwise, he would have stood there like an idiot.

The man replied, “Come and see.” It was the tenth hour, late afternoon.

They went with him. And they found out his name. Joshua. Deliverer.

They spent the night at his place, talking almost all night. The man was phenomenal. They thought John knew scripture, but this man was a walking commentary, a living Talmud. Any question they had, he could answer. And he was great to listen to. He had such a style of speaking. Where John was a bit on the bombastic side, this man was a teacher.

The next morning, the first thing Andrew did was go get his brother Simon. Simon was a rough guy, a man with a strong temperament. He didn’t really want to come, but Andrew insisted.

“Come meet this man!” he said. You will never hear anyone like him.

Andrew had said that before, Simon thought. He always felt uncomfortable around John. Something about his asceticism made him to where he had trouble being around him. Simon liked his dinner and wine at night.

It wasn’t that John was bad, nor was Simon, it was just that John made Simon uncomfortable.

But he came. Simon knew that once Andrew got something into his head, all you could do was go along and hope it got over fast.

When the man saw Simon, he looked so pleased, like he had been expecting him. And the first thing he said when he saw Simon was, I think I am going to call you Cephas, Peter, Rock.

That left Peter dumbfounded. For one thing, he always felt he was the more solid of the two brothers. In fact, he always said that Andrew was the sand, he was the rock. Andrew was easily moved and impressed, but not him. No sir. He had a good head on his shoulders.

Of course, sometimes Andrew would call him a blockhead.

But when Jesus said this, he was amazed. he just sort of sat down and listened to Joshua talk. Andrew knew Simon (or Peter – he would have to get used to that) always had a good mind. It wasn’t that he was dumb. It was just that he was hard-headed. When he felt something was so, he thought it was so. No in-between or gray areas or anything else.

Rock was a good name for him, Andrew thought.

The next day, they left for Galilee.  It surprised the fire out of Andrew that Joshua was from Galilee. I mean, who comes out of Galilee? It is, for the most part, a nowhere place, back water, middle of nowhere.

But they went if John really thought this man was worth following, they would follow him. At least for a while.

He collected several more people on the way. Two of them were Philip and Nathanael.

Philip came immediately. He was drawn to Joshua and couldn’t leave where he was fast enough.

But he went first and got his friend Nathanael. Evidently Nathanael laughed. He felt about Galilee like Andrew did. But by this time, Joshua had told them he was from Nazareth. Again, a little nowhere town in a nowhere place.

When Nathanael came up, Joshua said he was a true Israelite, that he was a real person.

Nathanael asked, Do I know you? Joshua said he had seen him under the fig tree when Philip called him.

Nathanael, and the rest for that matter, was impressed. Could this man see the future? Surely he was a prophet sent from God.

Nathanael called him the son of God, King of Israel. Andrew found out later that Nathanael was like that, full of exaggeration. He was a real emotional kind of guy who was as quickly impressed as Peter wasn’t.

Joshua told him that if he liked that, if he was impressed by that little thing, that tiny prophecy – like where else would a guy like Nathanael be – that  he would see greater things than that.

Joshua said, “I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

Well, Andrew had never heard anyone say anything like that before.

What was he going to do? Time would tell.