John the Baptist (Jesus knows your grief)

Pre-Script:  In my heart, I deeply desire to know the heart of Jesus. Therefore,  I am reading through the gospels again, slowly, and taking notes.  I am prayerful as I read, asking the Lord to reveal to me anything I may have missed in reading these gospels, and to understand the true intent of Jesus' words.  I am not here to add anything to the words of Jesus; that would be blasphemy.  These are simply my observations from reading through the gospels.  Jesus said a lot of things, do I actually know and understand what he said, or do I just think I know because I've heard a few sermons?  The Lord is opening my eyes.  I expect him to continue because the bible says that 

"the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him." (2 Chronicles 16:9) 

I believe that to anyone who is truly His, He will begin to reveal His heart. This is a mystery, and this is the deepest treasure.   

    The more I try to read the bible, to truly read it to understand it, the more I realize the need to keep reading and learning and understanding it.  There is never an end to reading the bible.  I can read the same bible verses and stories any amount of times I read them, and each time I learn something new, if I am willing to hear it, and if I am willing to keep a soft heart.  

     If anyone thinks that they have read and studied the whole bible and know and understand all there is to know about it, I feel sorry for that person.

"Get wisdom, get understanding;...The beginning of wisdom is this: get wisdom." Proverbs 4:5 and 7

Once upon a time, (AD 1-30 ish?) Jesus had a cousin.  His name was John.  He was probably, from what I can tell in reading the scriptures, the closest friend Jesus ever had.  John was only 6 months older than Jesus, and by my observation, John seemed to be the only other person on Earth who fully believed and accepted that Jesus was the Son of God.  John knew that Jesus was the Messiah, and he also knew that the point of John's birth was to be the voice that prepared the way of the Messiah.  

Before John was born, an angel had appeared to his father, and said:

"Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John.  He will be a joy and a delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord.  He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born.  He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God.  And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous-to make ready a people prepared for the Lord."

Luke 1:13-17

John knew this, and he lived out his calling with passion and conviction.  

"In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."

Matthew 3:1-2

(and later, John said:)

"I baptize you with water for repentance.  But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire."

Matthew 3:11

Even among the followers of Jesus, John the Baptist seems to be the only one who fully understood what was actually going on with this Jesus God person Messiah the rest of the people weren't too sure about.

There is so much about John that I could write.  His life and ministry were extraordinarily profound.  But the main thing that is piercing my heart right now to say about John is that this most close and precious friend of Jesus, more a brother than a cousin, had a life and ministry that was ended short by a violent, horrific murder.

John the Baptist was unjustly imprisoned, and then beheaded.

Have you ever experienced such a grief?

Has anyone you loved dearly died?

What about violent murder, has your best friend been violently murdered?

If so, you have a Savior who has suffered that very thing.

One description of Jesus is as

  "A man of suffering, and familiar with pain."(New International Version)

or in other words,

"A man of sorrows,  and acquainted with deepest grief."(New American Standard Version)

or in other words,

"A man of sorrows, intimately familiar with suffering"(International Standard version)

-All translations of Isaiah 53:3

The story is written out in the book of Matthew chapter 14. 

Yet the grief that Jesus felt was only slightly hinted at in the bible.  

"When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place."

Matthew 14:13

It seems to me that Jesus needed some time to be alone in his grief.  But the people followed him anyway, they would not leave him alone.  And though his heart must have been broken,  Jesus had compassion on them, and knew it was his duty to minister to them, even while grieving.  

"When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick."

Matthew 14:14

But when that crowd went home that night, Jesus let his disciples leave and he spent more time alone.

   

"Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd.  After he had dismissed them, he went up on the mountainside by himself to pray."

Matthew 14:22-23

I have a feeling that it was to grieve and just heal up a bit of his heart.  

But that is all the information we have about Jesus reaction to the news of the death of his cousin.

     I think that because the death of Jesus was so much the point of his whole life and ministry, we probably don't think about the death of John the Baptist very much. 

 But really, the truth is, before Jesus ever suffered his own horrific death for us, He had experienced the horror of the violent murder of (to what I can best surmise was) his best, most beloved friend, and probably his closest family member.  

It seems like a situation that could be absolutely pulled out of the headlines in the newspaper today.   So if you have ever experienced a violent death of someone you love in your own life,  know that the Lord of Lords and King of Kings at one point in human history walked this earth in human flesh.  But before he ever fulfilled his calling to be physically tortured and murdered for us, in His own personal life He had suffered deep, emotional grief.