John the baptist, the second coming of Elijah.

John 1.19-23, Matthew 17.10-13.

There are two series I’m starting: One on the prophet Elijah, and one on the prophet John bar Zechariah, also called John the baptist.

Yes, I know the custom is to capitalize “baptist,” along with way too many other things in Christendom. But if I capitalize the word, I mean people and things of the Baptist tradition, started by English dissenters in the 1600s and continued in the United States by Roger Williams and John Clarke. The prophet John is “the baptist” in that he ritually washed (Greek ἐβάπτισεν/eváptisen “baptized”) people as a sign of their repentance, Mt 3.11 which is not traditionally why people ritually cleansed themselves. It was odd, so it got people’s attention, made him stand out, and drew people to him.

In the Pharisees’ beliefs about the End Times, they taught before Messiah came to Israel to overthrow the Romans and rule the world, God would send forerunners. Multiple forerunners, actually. There’d be the Prophet, and there’d be the second coming of Elijah. Obviously the Pharisee End Times Timeline had a few screws loose—same as all the Christian End Times Timelines—because they mixed up God’s benevolent intentions with their own selfish desires to see God smite anyone they considered their enemies. Human depravity regularly befouls our End Times views, and makes each one more fearful and vengeful, and less Christlike, than the last.

But some parts they got right. There is an End Times Prophet… and he’s Jesus. And there is a second coming of Elijah… but he’s not a literal second coming of Elijah; he’s someone just like Elijah, and that’d be John. Although John was entirely sure he’s not Elijah, and said so:

John 1.19-23 KWL

19This is John’s witness

when the Judeans of Jerusalem

send priests and Levites to him

so they could ask him, “Who are you?”¹

20John confesses,

and doesn’t refuse them.

He confesses this:

“I’m not Messiah.”

21The Judeans ask Johnᴾ, “Who then?

Are you¹ Elijah?”

He says, “I’m not.”

“Are you¹ the Prophet?”

He answers, “No.”

22The Judeans tell Johnᴾ “Who are you?¹

—so we can give an answer

to those who send us to you.¹

What do you¹ say about yourself?”¹

23John says, “I’m ‘the voice

shouting out in the wilderness,

“Straighten the Lord’s road!” ’

just as the prophet Isaiah says.”

So he’s neither the Prophet nor Elijah; he’s some third guy they hadn’t detected in their End Times studies.

But it turns out… John was wrong. (Yep, John put an error in our bibles!) Jesus says he totally is Elijah. And Jesus is absolutely in a position to know, so whenever I quote what John had to say about himself, I make sure to tell you Jesus corrects him.

Matthew 17.10-13 KWL

10The students are questioning Jesus,ᴾ

saying, “So why do the scribes say this?—

‘Elijah has to come first’?”

11In reply {Jesus} says, “Elijah comes {first} indeed,

and restores everything.

12I tell you² this:

Elijah comes now.

They don’t acknowledge him,

but do to him whatever they want.

In this same way the Son of Man

is about to suffer under them.”

13Then the students understand this—

Jesus is speaking to them about John the baptist.

“That’s it; God’s shutting off your water.”

1 Kings 16.29 - 17.1.

Four prophets in the Hebrew scriptures stand out above all the others: Abraham ben Terah, Moses ben Amram, David ben Jesse, and Elijah—we don’t know Elijah’s father’s name, but we know where he’s from. (Or think we do; I’ll explain in a bit.) So we know him as Elijah of Tishbe.

True, you’re gonna find people who want to add other favorite prophets to this list. Or debate whether David counts as a prophet, ’cause he was primarily a king. But these four were big deals because hearing from God led ’em to act, and what they did significantly influenced ancient Israeli history.

We get to the first appearance of Elijah right after the first appearance of Ahab ben Omri, whom the Deuteronomistic Historian considers the very worst of Israel’s kings. Right here, you’ll see why.

1 Kings 16.29- 17.1KWL

29Ahab ben Omri became king over Israel

in the 38th year of Asa, king of Judah.

Ahab ben Omri ruled over Israel

in Samaria for 22 years.

30Ahab ben Omri did evil in the LORD’s eyes,

more than everyone before him.

31It became trivial to walk

in the sins of Jeroboam ben Nabat.

Ahab took the woman Jezebel bat Ethbaal

—he was king of the Sidonians—

and went to enslave himself to the Baal,

and popularize him.

32Ahab erected an altar to Baal

in the house of Baal he built in Samaria.

33Ahab made an Asherah pole.

Ahab added to what he did

to provoke the LORD, god of Israel,

more than all Israel’s kings before him.

34In Ahab’sᴾ day,

Khiyel of Bethel rebuilt Jericho.

With Abiram his firstborn, he established her;

with Segub his youngest he set up her door,

according to the LORD’s word

which he said by the hand of Joshua ben Nun.

1Elijah of Tishbe, a settler in Gilead,

told Ahab, “By the life of the LORD,

God of Israel, whose face I stand before,

for these next years dew and rain

will come only by the word of my mouth.”

And that’s the entirety of our introduction to Elijah. Nothing more about his background other than he comes from Tishbe, which is present-day el-Ishtib, Jordan, also called Tell Mar Elias. about 53km south from Lake Tiberias, in the mountains. There are those who claim תִּשְׁבִּ֜י/tišbí, “Tishbite,” actually means “nomad”—it’s not where he’s from but what he is. Maybe. Very little is known about Tishbe.

Elsewhere in Kings we’re told Elijah is hairy and wore leather, 2Ki 1.8 and from this most Christians assume he was a Nazirite, an ascetic who swore a special vow to abstain from grapes, corpses, and cutting one’s hair. I’m not sure he was Nazirite, because he raised a boy from the dead, and touched him in order to do it, 1Ki 17.19 so that’d break a Nazirite oath. Oh, and don’t forget that glass of wine we leave him in the Passover seder.

Since there’s so little to say about Elijah, let’s back up to Ahab.

Manic Christianity.

When you’re a brand-new Christian, you tend to geek out at everything.

It’s totally understandable. Newbies are so hungry to learn, yet know so very little. So they constantly lose their tiny minds about all the cool stuff they’ve just discovered. “Wow, have you read this verse? Have you read this book? Have you heard of this preacher? Are you going to this conference? Check out this worship album!” They’re like fangirls and fanboys at a convention. Their enthusiasm is fun; I wish more Christians were as excited about Jesus as they.

Problem is, some longtime Christians sound exactly like they do—excited about every new discovery they’ve just made about Christianity—and it’s like, “Wait, you’ve been Christian for 20 years. This is stuff you should’ve learned already. Why haven’t you?”

Well duh: They’re not growing as Christians.

They discovered a new book, and were all hyper about it, and devoured it, and lived by it a few weeks, and then forgot about it. And a year passed, and they didn’t grow any. And then they discovered another new book, and got all hyper about that book for a time. They’re still making baby steps of faith, and the reason they’re all excited about it is because they’re still spiritual babies.

And every time they come across a new Christian resource, they think this is the resource which is really gonna get ’em to grow into mature Christianity. It’s not, because a resource doesn’t make mature Christians; the Holy Spirit does, by growing good fruit in us. The resources just teach us a thing or two. Some of it practical, some of it really not, but knowledge ain’t maturity. Fruit is.

And this lack of maturity expresses itself as mania. That’s why they’re as twitchy as yapper dogs, years or decades after they said the sinner’s prayer. They haven’t developed the fruit of gentleness, so their emotions are still getting tossed hither and yon by every new Christian fad—or sometimes really old Christian fads they’ve only just discovered. They don’t have emotional control because they’re not working on growing fruit. They think, wrongly, these wild emotions are a sign of a growing faith: They’re still so excited about Jesus!

But all too often this turns into chasing that spiritual high, instead of following Jesus.

Giving compliments to God.

People commonly think praise and worship are just synonyms for the word compliments: If you praise God, you say nice things about him, to him. “Oh Lord, ooh you are so big, so absolutely huge; gosh we’re all really impressed down here, I can tell you.” Like that.

And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with complimenting God. He’s awesome! The problem is sometimes we aren’t really complimenting him; we’re telling him this stuff because we think it’s part of the formula for getting our requests answered. When we pray—and many Christians actually believe and teach this!—we have to begin with the compliments. We have to tell God nice things and butter him up praise him properly.

As demonstrated, they claim, by the Lord’s Prayer: “Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven” is supposedly praise. Not prayer requests for God to make his own name holy, bring about his kingdom, and encourage us to obey him. Anyway, because they imagine these are praises not requests, they insist the Lord’s Prayer begins with praise… so our prayers should begin with praise. Start by telling God how awesome he is. “Dear heavenly Father… ooh you are so big…” and so forth.

Again: Nothing wrong with complimenting God; nothing wrong with beginning our prayers with compliments. Nothing wrong with entire prayers consisting of compliments. Some of the psalms are nothing but compliments.

Psalm 145.0-7 CSB

0A hymn of David.

1I exalt you, my God the King,

and bless your name forever and ever.

2I will bless you every day;

I will praise your name forever and ever.

3The LORD is great and is highly praised;

his greatness is unsearchable.

4One generation will declare your works to the next

and will proclaim your mighty acts.

5I will speak of your splendor and glorious majesty

and your wondrous works.

6They will proclaim the power of your awe-inspiring acts,

and I will declare your greatness.

7They will give a testimony of your great goodness

and will joyfully sing of your righteousness.

David ben Jesse had loads of plaudits to give God for what he’d done. No doubt we can all think of great things God did in the bible, and hopefully we also have some testimonies of great things he did in our own lives. Or how he graciously behaves towards us when we interact with him.

Jesus steps out of public.

John 11.54-57.

After raising Lazarus from the dead, after the Judean senate and head priest decided maybe Jesus oughta die to keep the Romans pacified, Jesus decided maybe he ought not be where the Judeans could easily grab him.

John 11.54-57 KWL

54So Jesus is no longer walking boldly among the Judeans,

but is leaving from there to a region near the wilderness,

to a city called Efrém.

He’s staying there with the students.

55It’s getting near the Judean Passover,

and many are leaving their land

to Jerusalem for Passover

so they might purify themselves.

56So those who are seeking Jesus

are also saying to one another

as they stood in the temple,

“What do you² think?

Might he choose to not come to the feast?”

57The head priests and Pharisees gave a command,

that when anyone knows where Jesus is,

they should make it known,

so they might arrest him.

“Purify themselves” in verse 55 refers to the people who’d traveled to Jerusalem from far away, and because there was no way of traveling long distances without becoming ritually unclean, they gave themselves an extra week to get ritually clean. So, lots of washing and baptizing. As soon as all the local pools are full of dusty diaspora Jews, you know Passover’s coming.

When I taught on this passage previously, one of the kids in the study said, “What’re they arresting him for, raising Lazarus? Was raising the dead illegal?” I had to remind him ancient Judea didn’t have any Fourth Amendment; only a command against kidnapping, Ex 21.16 which supposedly they weren’t doing because they were immediately gonna try him, condemn him, then have the Romans kill him.

And they expected to have him in their clutches fairly soon, since Jesus had to come to Jerusalem for Passover, because the Law said every adult male had to come to temple for Passover. Dt 16.6 Add to that they “gave a command” that if anyone knew where Jesus was, they had to tell them.

Really don’t wanna go to church.

There’s a guy whose blog I’ve followed for years. Not so much anymore; since about 2010 or so, he’s really been telling his readers, and anyone else who might listen, to quit their churches. Stop going, he says. Just stop. Stay home. You’ll be a lot happier.

And I get it. There were times in my life where I didn’t wanna go to church either. For the usual excuses.

SLEEP! What moron decided church services should happen first thing in the morning on our day off? I’m not a morning person; I don’t like anything first thing in the morning; not work, not school, not even breakfast. Give me an evening service.

CHAPEL COUNTS, RIGHT? I went to a Christian college, which had daily chapel services. Every morning, 25 minutes of worship songs, 25 of preaching. (Sometimes more music, sometimes more preaching.) A week’s worth of chapel provides plenty of both those things… so why go to a church service to get more? That became my excuse for skipping church for a semester. Me and a lot of other students.

I’M OUT OF TOWN. The other excuse that semester was I already have a church… 100 miles away, and impractical to visit every Sunday. And since I have a church, why visit some other church? So I used this reason to ditch all the nearby churches, none of which I cared for. And I did go to church whenever I went back home on college breaks. But while I was at school, I figured it was okay to miss 10 weeks of services.

DON’T GOTTA GO EVERY WEEK. Which… is actually true. If you’re in leadership, and I often am, you’re obligated to be there weekly. If not, you can miss a Sunday here and there. Now, when I was in my don’t-wanna-go phase, it wasn’t just here and there; it was a lot. And I know a number of Christians who only attend once a month; and of course there are twice-a-year Christians who only visit Easter and Christmas. If that; sometimes they just watch the Easter and Christmas services on YouTube.

WE HAVE FREEDOM IN CHRIST! In context, the passage about freedom of conscience Ro 14 is about looking out for weaker Christians, not the freedom to be irresponsible. But as you’re well aware, irresponsible Christians don’t give a rip about context.

I CAN DO THIS ON MY OWN, Y’KNOW. In my late teens I had grown really annoyed with the people of my church, so this was my excuse for a few weeks. ’Cause we totally can do a lot of this stuff on our own.

• Pray?—no problem.
• Sing worship songs?—easily done.
• Learn from fellow Christians?—I have Christian books. Nowadays I have the internet. There’s no shortage of Christian content.
• Study the bible?—okay, I got a study bible.
• Tithing? Well kinda. I could donate money to myself for “religious” expenses. Or I could give money to charity. Or I could spend all of it at a Peets one afternoon while I sit there reading some Christian book; wouldn’t that totally count?
• Take holy communion? Um… I could eat saltines and grape juice on my own, and call it communion. Problem is, the vital element in communion is, y’know, actual communion with fellow Christians. So that makes it tricky.

Same as all our other rituals which require the participation of fellow Christians. Plus evangelism: Once you share Jesus with someone, where do you take ’em so they can be taught Christianity and mentored? Well I could do it by myself… but that’d mean I’m starting a church, right?

There are plenty more excuses out there. Some of them get pretty complex, and as a result they kinda merit whole articles, because it takes a little time to take these excuses apart. But for plenty of Christians, any excuse will do. They simply don’t wanna go. So they don’t.

The first psalm: Meditate on the scriptures.

Psalm 1.

For years I’ve been writing about psalms, but I’ve never written anything on the first one. Even though it’s the second psalm I memorized. (The first was the 23rd, and honestly I got it memorized because of the Keith Green song.) I used the text-to-speech feature on my Macintosh Quadra to recite Psalm 1 in the New International Version to Edvard Grieg’s “Í höll Dofrakonungs úr Pétri Gaut,” or “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” as we call it in English. So now it’s permanently in my brain that way. I suppose I could re-memorize it to the Scottish metrical version… but nah; what’s important is it’s in there.

But yes, I retranslated it for this bible study. Didn’t make it rhyme yet.

Anyway. The first psalm, Beatus vir, “Blessed is the man,” begins the first book of Psalms. If you’re thinking, “There are five books of Psalms?” yes there are; they’ve been mashed together into the one book of Psalms in your bible, but originally they were five. We don’t know who wrote Beatus vir, though some folks will claim it’s Ezra because it’s about meditating on the Law of Moses, and Ezra was a scribe, and scribes did just that. But that’s a lousy reason to insist Ezra wrote it. Anybody who thinks there’s wisdom to be found in the Law would appreciate this psalm, and anybody back in bible times who felt that way would’ve written such a psalm.

My translation second. I figured first I’d give you the version from the 1550 Church of Scotland prayer book. They sing it to the same song as “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing.”

Psalm 1 Scottish psalter

1That man hath perfect blessedness,

who walketh not astray

In counsel of ungodly men,

nor stands in sinners’ way,

Nor sitteth in the scorner’s chair:

2But placeth his delight

Upon God’s law, and meditates

on his law day and night.

3He shall be like a tree that grows

near planted by a river,

Which in his season yields his fruit,

and his leaf fadeth never:

And all he doth shall prosper well

4The wicked are not so;

But like they are unto the chaff,

which wind drives to and fro.

5In judgment therefore shall not stand

such as ungodly are;

Nor in th’ assembly of the just

shall wicked men appear.

6For why? the way of godly men

unto the Lord is known:

Whereas the way of wicked men

shall quite be overthrown.

You want it to sound authentic, try singing it in a Scottish accent. Go ahead; I’ve got time.