How Is This Good News?

The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah. John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”  And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them. - Luke 3:15-18

All this talk about burning things up doesn’t sound that great. It sounds like God is angry. And yet, at the end of the passage it says that this was good news. Strange.

Perhaps part of the good news is that the Messiah they wanted was not the Messiah they got. A typical example of what they thought the Messiah should do is captured here:

How beautiful are the eyes of the King Messiah who is to arise from the House of Judah! He girds his loins and goes out to war against his enemies, and kills kings and rulers, reddening the mountains with the blood of their slain. - Palestinian Targum, Codex Neofiti (1st century AD)

Nothing like having your Messiah show up and destroy all your enemies!

John the Baptist is working to deconstruct their ideas of Messiah. We’ll unpack this more tomorrow, but for today, ask yourself what your expectations of the Messiah are. This might take a minute, but if you took all your prayers over the past year and fashioned a Messiah to be the fulfillment of all the expectations implied by those prayers, what would the Messiah look like? Jot down the first half a dozen things that this Messiah would prioritize and accomplish, based on your prayers.

Now ask yourself if that’s the kind of Messiah we really have.

Is there a way to embrace that good news that the real Messiah isn’t the one who is built out of your expectations? Perhaps that’s what the Bible means when it says that John the Baptist kept bringing up good news - he was helping them see that the real Messiah was so much more than they thought.

Give thanks today for the good news that Jesus isn’t just who you want him to be.