Elijah and John the Baptist, Matthew 17:9-13
The focus here is on understanding the significance and the roles of
Elijah and John the Baptist. It is important for us in order to get focused on
this section to have a little review, going back to what we learned as far back
as Matthew chapter fifteen. Remember up until the end of chapter sixteen
Jesus is giving more and more instruction to the disciples. He is training them
in order for them to be prepared for that time that comes after His death. But
then at the end of chapter seventeen when He begins to announce in verse 21
that it was necessary for Him to go to Jerusalem and to suffer many things at
the hands of the religious leaders, and to die, be buried, and rise again, at
that point He begins to prepare them for the fact that he is going to die. And
that message rattles their cage because their whole presupposition about the
Messiah doesn't fit this scenario. They had been imbued with their cultural
expectation from second temple Judaism that the Messiah was going to come and
give them a glorious reign, throw off their enemies and establish this
incredible time of peace and prosperity and glory. Having the Messiah die just
doesn't fit their scenario. This is what shakes them up.
In Matthew 15:21-28 Jesus was teaching the disciples about the bounty of
God's grace. Not just to the Jews to whom He has been primarily ministering but
at that point He goes outside of Galilee into the area of Phoenicia—Tyre and Sidon—and to a Canaanite woman, and there He cast
a demon out of her daughter. That emphasizes God's bountiful grace to the
Gentiles and not just to the Jews and that this is a foretaste of what will
come in the church age. As Jesus came back from that area He came back towards
the east side of the Sea of Galilee and there the multitudes of Gentiles came
to Him and He healed them. At the same time this was when He fed the four
thousand Gentiles from just a few loaves and fish, again emphasizing the
expansiveness of God's grace to the Gentiles. And He is also continuing to
teach the disciples that God's grace is more than sufficient for whatever
problem that they face. That is what he taught them earlier with the feeding of
the five thousand; He reinforced that with the feeding of the four thousand,
emphasizing that that blessing to the Gentiles also mirrored God's blessing
towards the Jews, again foreshadowing what would take place in the future with
the church.
Jesus warned them about the evil of the teaching of the Pharisees and
Sadducees and their religious doctrine in Matthew 16:1-12, and following that
He took them up north to Caesarea Philippi and there with just the disciples
around Him He began to ask them: Who do you think that I am? Peter spoke up and
gave the right answer: “You are the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of the living
God”. For this Jesus praised Him and emphasized that it was upon this
rock—referring to Himself—that He would build His church—the first reference to
the coming church that is given in the Gospels. Only Matthew uses the word EKKLESIA. It is at that point that He begins to warn them not to tell about the
fact that He was Jesus the Messiah. This gets its
meaning from many Old Testament passages. As we read through Isaiah chapter
fifty-three what strikes us is that this is not a picture of a glorious
reigning Messiah, this is a picture of a suffering Messiah. One of the
misunderstandings, one of the errors in the theology of the rabbis in the
second temple period was that they focused on the glorious rule of the Messiah
and His role as the suffering Messiah began to diminish more and more until it
was virtually forgotten and unknown. Everybody thought of the Messiah as this
wonderful conqueror, a ruling glorious Messiah who was going to bring in a utopic kingdom—all of which was true, but what the
Scriptures teach is that the cross, the suffering Messiah, must come before the
reigning and glorious Messiah.
So we see the language in Isaiah 53:3, that He is despised and not
esteemed; in verse 4 He bears griefs, carries our
sorrows as He is stricken, smitten by God—language that indicates rejection and
suffering. In verse 5, He was wounded for our transgressions and it is by His
stripes (scourging) that we are healed. In verse 8 He is cut off from the
land of the living—language that indicates that He is going to die. He is
suffering and He will die. They “make His grace with the wicked” again a clear
indication that He is going to die and that this comes before the glory of the
kingdom. In Isaiah 53:10 we learn that it is the Lord's will to bruise Him and
to make Him a sin offering for His people. Verse 11, it is through that that
God looks on Him and He is satisfied (the English word propitiation). His righteousness and justice are satisfied by the suffering of
Christ as payment of our penalty. “By His knowledge”, i.e. by learning
who Jesus Christ is and what He did on the cross, “many will be justified”. He
again a clear doctrine that it is through the Messiah that justification occurs
for human beings. It is done by substitutionary atonement; He is the one who
will bear our iniquities.
Each month the disciples get more and more and more information, their
knowledge and understanding of the fact that He is the Messiah would increase,
and Jesus is going to add a new dimension to this. He tells them in Matthew 16:21 NASB
“From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem,
and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be
killed, and be raised up on the third day.” This is something they just don't
understand. Peter doesn't understand it and once again he just comes along and
says, “This can't be, that's not really the plan; we don't believe that”. That
just shows how much any of our presuppositions can block us from really
understanding the truth. We have a wrong assumption and then we read the
Scripture and it says something else, and we have difficulty understanding it
because we are locked in by an erroneous presupposition. That is what happened
with Peter, and so Jesus rebukes him. In fact, He calls him Satan because he is
taking Satan's position that you don't need to suffer, you don't need to go to
the cross; it is not necessary.
Then there is a section
where the Lord talks about the fact that if we are really going to follow Him we
need to take up our cross and follow Him. We would rather dwell on the thoughts
of a glorious utopic environment than on the fact
that we need to suffer; we need to follow the Lord in His suffering. It is not
for salvation, but in our spiritual life and our spiritual growth, submitting
to the authority of God. That is the meaning of that phrase to take up our
cross and follow Him.
At the end of that
statement Jesus said the Son of man will come in His
glory. Then in verse 28 He said there were some in that group who would not
taste death until they see the Son of Man come in His kingdom. He is clearly
indicating that this kingdom isn't going to come until after the Messiah
suffers and dies. The kingdom is postponed. Six days later Jesus takes Peter,
James and John up on the top of a mountain and there something incredible took
place; He revealed His glory.
This took place five or six months before Jesus' crucifixion. Jesus is
crucified around the time of March in that next year, so what we would expect is
that this is sometime in October or September. The language that is used here
is interesting. Peter says, “We need to build tabernacles for you three.” Then
the Father shows up in a bright cloud and overshadows them, and this is
language that we often find in the fall feast of Israel called Succoth or Sukkot. Guess when that is. It is a feast that points
Israel to the future fulfillment of the kingdom in glory. The “tabernacles”
here refers to what was basically a lean-to; sometimes it is translated “booths”.
It has been referred to as the feast of booths, and it looks back to the time
when Israel was in the wilderness and they basically lived in lean-to's along
the way that they would build until they arrived in the Promised Land. So the
feast of tabernacles or booths looks back to how God provided for them in the
wilderness, but that was a foreshadowing to look forward to, the future kingdom
that God would provide for them.
Those temporary dwellings were just for now but God would replace them
with permanent dwellings. This is the focus on the feast of booths and in both
biblical and rabbinic traditions the feast of tabernacles speaks of the future
kingdom of the Messiah. It teaches about the establishment of what Amos 9:11
calls the tabernacle of David. That is because now the tabernacle of David has
fallen. At the time of Christ the tabernacle was fallen. What does that mean?
The tabernacle is a dwelling place or a home, a house. It is referring to the
house of David, the dynasty of David. The dynasty of David had fallen on hard
times after the defeat of Judah at the time of the Babylonian captivity and
that kingship was never restored to the house of David. But the one who will
restore the kingship to the house of David is the Lord Jesus Christ as the greater
son of David. The Canaanite woman whose daughter was demon possessed used that
title to refer to Jesus. So one aspect of this feast is to focus upon the
future restoration of the house of David during the time of the kingdom of the
Messiah.
Another aspect of Sukkot is the dwelling of
God in the wilderness in the tabernacle, and it related to the Shekinah glory, which was the cloud that showed up when
God's presence was in the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle. That was referred
to by the word SKENE, the word that is
translated tabernacle or a dwelling place. The English word that comes from
that is used as a technical term in drama and theatre: the word “scene”. When
they are up on the mount of transfiguration there is a foreshadowing of the
future kingdom, the glory of the Messiah, and the language there is the same
kind of language that is used when talking about the feast of Sukkot. John uses the word to describe Jesus in John
chapter one: “The word became flesh and dwelt among us”--the verb for of the
word. This is the dwelling of the second person of the Trinity in a human body which cloaked His glory.
Matthew 17:9 NASB “As they were coming down from the
mountain, Jesus commanded them, saying, 'Tell the vision to no one until the
Son of Man has risen from the dead'.” Earlier He told them not to tell
anyone that He was Jesus the Christ. Now as he comes down with Peter, James and
John He says this. I'm sure Peter is thinking, “There you go, Lord, talking
about dying again; that's not the plan; we don't like that plan. What has
happened to the kingdom?” Then the disciples articulate that. [10] “And His disciples asked
Him, 'Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?'” What they are really asking is on their understanding of the Old
Testament. There is the prophecy in Malachi that before the Messiah comes
Elijah must come, and Elijah will be the forerunner of the Messiah and will
proclaim the coming of the Messiah. They are saying that they don't understand.
If the scribes teach that Elijah must come first, what is going with the plan
because the messianic kingdom is not coming, according to you, you are going to
die,so we are just totally
confused.
Part of the background for understanding this is
understanding that there is contingency in God's plan. That is an
important thing to recognize because it applies to all of our lives. God in His
sovereignty is directing human history to His end, to His desired goal. But
within that plan God has allowed and built in a certain amount of flexibility to
allow for our negative volition, so that in His omniscience He knows all of the
things that can take place and all of the things that would or should or could
have taken place, but won't take place because of our volition. So it allows
for human beings to have genuine volition at different times, and many times we
make bad decisions and are living on about plan X, Y or Z instead of A, B or C.
Nevertheless God is still working out His plan. His ultimate plan and structure
is not dependent upon human volition, He will still work things out. He gives
us the freedom to make bad decisions, but God is of such magnificent power and
control that He doesn't have to force human beings to do everything the way He
wants to bring about His end result. He is still able to bring about His end
result without violating individual human responsibility.
We see this in passages like Matthew 11:23 where Jesus is addressing the
negative volition and hostility of His hometown, Capernaum: “And you,
Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will descend to Hades;
for if the miracles had occurred in Sodom which occurred in you, it would have
remained to this day.” He knows what would have happened if Sodom had been
positive; He knows what the alternatives would have been and understands not
only what will happen but what could have, would have, or should have happened.
God doesn't lose control because He gives a measure of freedom to human beings
to exercise their volition.
As we study Matthew chapter seventeen we have to go back to some other
passages to understand what comes up in verse 10 when the disciples ask: “Why
then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?” John the Baptist would
have had that role of Elijah if Israel had responded positively to the message
that Jesus was the Messiah. But because they rejected Jesus John ended up not
fulfilling that Elijah role. That will ultimately be
fulfilled by someone in the Tribulation period.
In Matthew chapter eleven where the context is talking about John the Baptist, looking back to his death, Jesus quotes Malachi. Matthew 11:10 NASB “This is the one about whom it is written, ‘BEHOLD, I SEND MY MESSENGER AHEAD OF YOU, WHO WILL PREPARE YOUR WAY BEFORE YOU'.” Jesus is definitely saying that John the Baptist is the one that Malachi is talking about. John the Baptist is the one who fulfills that messenger role as the forerunner of the Messiah, the one who announces His coming. There is a pattern that we see in the Old Testament that starts with Samuel. When God was going to give Israel a king the first person to show up is going to be Samuel the prophet because Samuel represents the authority of the throne of God, and Samuel the prophet is the one who anoints the king, indicating that the king under the authority of God. The king is not autonomous; you have to have the prophet anoint the king. We see this throughout the Old Testament: the prophet anoints the king. Jesus doesn't just show up as the King independent of prophetic announcement and prophetic authority; it is a prophet who anoints Jesus for the beginning of His role as the Messiah.
We see an analogy to that in American government. It is the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court who takes a Bible, and the president must put his
hand on the Bible and swear that he is going to uphold the Constitution of the
United States. It places the authority of the executive branch under the Word
of God and under the Constitution of the United States. It is not an autonomous
power though recent presidents have tended to abuse it and use it that way, and
that is a violation of their oath and a violation of the Constitution.
Malachi 3:1 NASB “Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. And the
Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the
covenant, in whom you delight, behold, He is coming,” says the LORD of hosts. [2] “But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can
stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap.”
He says there is this messenger who is going to appear before the Messiah, and
He is the one who will cleanse the temple. How is that seen in the life of
Jesus? He cleanses the temple twice. So John the Baptist fulfills that role.
That is clearly what Jesus states in Matthew 11:10.
Malachi 4:5 NASB “Behold, I am going to send you Elijah
the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD.”
This is at the very end of Malachi. The last verse in
Malachi chapter four is verse 6. The next verse is going to be Matthew chapter
one, verse one. So this is the last thing that God says to the Jews in the Old
Testament and then He is going to shut down revelation for almost 400 years.
The last thing that He tells them has to do with Elijah. There are two things
he says they need to do: remember the Law of Moses (v. 4) and look for Elijah.
Who shows up on the mount of transfiguration? Moses and Elijah. That is
part of the reason those two are there. Malachi says to remember the Law of
Moses in v. 4, and in verse 5 he says, “Behold, I will send you Elijah the
prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.” That
phrase “day of the Lord” refers to a time of divine judgment. If you just see the
term “day of the Lord” that probably includes all of the seven years of the
Tribulation, the period of Daniel's seventieth week, the period also of the
time of Jacob's trouble. In both Joel 2:31 and here we see a reference to the
day of the Lord as being great and terrible, and that is a reference to the
campaign of Armageddon, a series of battles that occur at the end of that
seven-year period. So this reference in Malachi 4:5 is that He would send
Elijah the prophet some time before the great and terrible day of the Lord.
That would be the Second Coming when Christ defeats the Antichrist, the false
prophet, Satan and the armies of the kings of the earth in the campaign of
Armageddon.
What is the role of Elijah? Malachi 4:6 NASB “He will restore
[NKJV: return] the hearts of the fathers to {their}
children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not
come and smite the land with a curse.” The word “return” in Hebrew is the word shub, a key word throughout the Old
Testament. Sometimes it is translated repent, sometimes it is translated “turn
back to God”. What Israel must do, according to Deuteronomy chapter thirty in
order to Israel to return to the land and for the kingdom to come, is to turn
back to God. So Elijah will come preceding the coming of the great and terrible
day of the Lord and his mission is to turn the people back to the Lord. The
phraseology here to turn the hearts of the children to their fathers is
reminiscent of the command given in Deuteronomy 6:6, 7 NASB “These words,
which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them
diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and
when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.” It is a
reference to the fact that they are turning back to God and that the Word of
God is believed and becoming vital in the social structure and the life of
Israel.
This is quoted in Luke.
Remember that the last thing that God said in the Old Testament was to look for
Elijah and that he is going to turn the people back to God. The first person
that shows up in the Gospel of Luke isn't Jesus. It is Zacharias the high
priest, and he is going in for his scheduled service in the temple. As he walks
into the Holy Place he is astounded to see an unexpected figure there, Gabriel,
who announces to him that he is indeed going to have a son. He describes this
son in Luke 1:16, 17 NASB “And he will turn many of the sons of
Israel back to the Lord their God. It is he who will go {as a forerunner}
before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, TO TURN THE HEARTS OF THE FATHERS BACK TO THE CHILDREN, and the disobedient to
the attitude of the righteous, so as to make ready a people prepared for the
Lord.” Zacharias is going to be the father of John the Baptist.
Notice that when we read
Malachi 4:5 we think that Elijah himself is going to come back. But the Bible
doesn't hold to reincarnation. What we learn from the progressive revelation of
Luke 1:17 is that the language of Malachi chapter four wasn't to be understood
literally but that there would be someone coming to follow in the king of
ministry of Elijah. Elijah was one who came and confronted the powers of his
day in the persons of Ahab and Jezebel and the false teaching that they promoted,
their hostility to believers, seeking to destroy them. This is the type of
ministry that this person is going to have. He is going to fulfil this
prophesied role of Malachi 4:5 and turn the hearts of the fathers back to the
children.
That failed in the life
and ministry of John the Baptist, his message was rejected and so he ends up
not being the fulfilment of that prophecy. In Malachi 3:1 the Lord said that
this was His messenger. But what happens later is He says something different;
He places a condition on it. Matthew 11:9, speaking of John the Baptist NASB
“But what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and one who is
more than a prophet. [10] “This is the one about whom it is written, ‘BEHOLD, I SEND MY MESSENGER AHEAD OF YOU,
WHO WILL PREPARE YOUR WAY BEFORE YOU'.”
He goes on to say,
Matthew 11:11 NASB “Truly I say to you, among those born of women
there has not arisen {anyone} greater than John the Baptist! Yet the one who is
least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” He is the greatest of the
Old Testament prophets because he is the one who had the privilege to announce
the Messiah. [12] “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of
heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force.” The religious leaders
are violently opposed to it and are trying to shut it down. [13] “For all the
prophets and the Law prophesied until John. [14] “And if you are willing to
accept {it,} John himself is Elijah who was to come.” Notice the language: “if
you are willing to accept it”. The “it” is the message of the kingdom. This is
Matthew chapter eleven before the official rejection in chapter twelve. John
would be the one who would fulfil all of that if his message had been accepted.
Matthew 17:10 NASB “And His disciples asked Him, 'Why then do
the scribes say that Elijah must come first?' [11] And He answered and said,
'Elijah is coming and will restore all things'. So now Elijah hasn't come. It
is not past tense, it is a present tense but it is a future sense. He is coming
in the future and he will restore all things. That word for restore is the
Greek word APOKATHISTEMI which was a
phrase also used to describe the restoration that would come in the end times
when the kingdom is established. That is the role of Elijah but it is put off.
There is somebody who is going to be that Elijah and will fulfill that ministry
in the power of Elijah and there will be a future restoration. There will be a
future time when there will be a utopia on this earth but it is not going to be
brought in by the Democrats! There will be a time when there will be peace on
the earth and that will be when the Messiah comes.
Mark 9:12 NASB “And He said to them, 'Elijah does first come and restore all things. And {yet} how is it written of the Son of Man that He will suffer many things and be treated with contempt?'” Peter finally got the point, and in Acts 3:18, 19 in his second major sermon he is again offering the kingdom to Israel NASB “But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled. Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.” That is a verse that refers to Israel, because repent means to turn and the issue for Israel is to turn back to the Lord. This is not a salvation verse saying that if you want to be saved and go to heaven you need to repent and believe. The verb for believe is used 95 times in the Gospel of John; zero times is repent mentioned; not once. Repentance was a code word coming out of the Mosaic Law directed specifically to Israel at this time that they needed to turn back because that was the condition of Deuteronomy. They needed to turn back so that God would restore them from all the nations from which they had been scattered.
Matthew 17:12 NASB “but I say to you that Elijah already
came, and they did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they wished. So
also the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands.” They arrested him, put
him in jail and cut his head off. So there Jesus recognizes John the Baptist as
Elijah, contingent upon his acceptance; he was not accepted, so that will be fulfilled by a person in the future.
Matthew 17:13 NASB “Then the disciples understood that He had
spoken to them about John the Baptist.”
The issue that confused them was an issue that still confuses people
today. It especially confuses those who are of a Jewish background because the
Scripture says that the cross is foolishness to them, because they don't
understand the distinctions between the suffering Messiah and the glorified
Messiah—that the cross had to come before the crown.
But this is what had to take place because the sin problem had to be solved.
Jesus had to pay that penalty for sin so that redemption was accomplished. We
could then be regenerate so that we could go into the kingdom that would come.
Jesus said to Nicodemus: You cannot see the kingdom of God unless you are born
again.