GOSPEL MEDITATION # 3

The Testimony of John the Baptist &

“Behold the Lamb of God”

John 1:19-34

1. Find a quiet place, alone and apart from distractions.
2. Be comfortably alert, still and at peace.
3. Say the Lord’s Prayer. Sing or cant the Jesus Prayer
4. Pray for family, friends, neighbors, and yourself.
5. Slowly and carefully read the passage of Scripture.
6. Reread it. From memory, determine the central points.
7. John the Baptist suddenly appears and states he is the “voice” crying in the wilderness proclaiming the arrival of the Messiah of Israel, uttering the words of Isaiah 40:3-5.
8. He is not the Messiah himself, nor the Elijah of Malachi 4:5, and not the prophet of Deuteronomy 18:15, rather he is a forerunner proclaiming the arrival of the Messiah.
9. John was baptizing those who were looking for the arrival of the “voice” John was announcing. This coming one was of far greater stature than John himself.
10. When John saw Jesus coming toward him while he was baptizing in the River Jordan near a town named Bethany (not the Bethany of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha) he said, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”
11. This coming one would be a sacrificial offering intending to put away all that was not intended to be, that is sin. Here is the Messiah, the suffering servant of Israel, that which is described in Isaiah 53.
12. John then announces that he saw the Spirit descend upon Jesus, as he had been informed he would see and thus making it clear who the servant of God was.
13. John is the first great evangelist, pointing everyone to the One who baptizes with, or better in, the Holy Spirit.
14. John’s work is now complete and every Christian follows the example of John, proclaiming Jesus as the Christ.