Deliverance

And this was [John the Baptist's] message: After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.  I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit (Mark 1:7-8).

Jesus said of John the Baptist that he was a prophet and "more than a prophet....among those born of women there is no one greater than John; yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he" (Luke 7:26-28).

If Jesus' words are true (and how could they be otherwise?), then there must be something to account for their truthfulness.  John was the greatest of the Old Testament prophets; he was the immediate herald of the arrival of the kingdom.  All of the other OT prophets foretold the coming of the kingdom of God, but they saw its arrival in the far distance.  John saw its immediate arrival in the Person of Jesus, "the Lamb of God."

The Jews would have recognized John's reference to "the Lamb" -- more than we would, unless we are familiar with the Jewish Passover.  Every year, the Jews celebrate their deliverance from slavery through the blood of the sacrificial lamb that was smeared on their doorposts.  The Angel of Death "passed over" their homes that night that all the first-born of Egypt died. 

So when John saw Jesus approaching and said, "Behold the Lamb of God," the Jews would have made connection in their minds to the Passover, and the Exodus from Egypt.  Immediately, the disciples of John left him and began to follow Jesus.  They believed what John said: "I baptize you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."

The Old Testament, the Baptism of John, everything we experience in our churches today -- whether sacraments, preaching, or ceremony -- point to this one thing:  the arrival of the kingdom of God and the giving of the Holy Spirit by Jesus.  We, too, like the Jewish people, celebrate deliverance from the bondage of sin and evil and oppression.  We too experience Passover at Eastertime, if the Spirit of God has set us free from the past.  It is hard to believe that the one who is "least" in the kingdom of God is greater than John the Baptist ---but it is true because, as Jesus said:

If a man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.

Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.

By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.  Up to that time, the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.

When Isaiah was prophesing, he mourned over the sadness and darkness of his people -- yet another form of slavery and oppression --- but he foresaw a time when there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress/ in the future, he will honor Galilee of the Gentiles, by the way of the sea, along the Jordan--

the people walking in darkness have seen a great light;

on those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned....

you have shattered the yoke that burdens them,

the bar across their shoulders, the rod of the oppressor (Is. 9:1-4).

The Passover Event was the great prophecy and proto-type of the shattering of the "rod of the oppressor."  If we look around at the people we know, we can see examples all around us of those who have been delivered from oppression, and out of whose "bellies flow streams of living water." 

When we can truly celebrate the Passover and know that we have passed from death to life, we will know that the kingdom of God has truly arrived.