“Who Are You?”
In 2 Kings 1, the wicked king Ahaziah has taken the throne following his father’s death. The names of his parents, Ahab and Jezebel, have become synonymous with the corruption, idolatry, and evil that dragged the northern kingdom of Israel away from God and towards destruction for centuries. Now that Ahab has been killed, the first book of Kings ends and the second book of Kings begins with statements of his son’s wickedness.
Ahaziah’s reign was brief; 1 Kings 22:51 states that he was king for only 2 years, and 2 Kings 1:2 opens the narrative by describing an injury that would eventually prove fatal. Following said injury, Ahaziah makes a decision that dooms him: instead of calling upon the God of Israel, the kings sends messengers to call upon “Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron,” a false deity of Philistine origin (this is the same deity that would be denoted later as “Beelzebub, the prince of demons,” in Matthew 12:24, Luke 11:15, and elsewhere). This decision angers both the true God and His prophet, Elijah, who delivers the message that Ahaziah will die of this injury because of his idolatry in verses 3-4. At this point, the messengers that Ahaziah has sent come back to him and report the prophet’s words in verses 5-6. In verse 7, the king asks for a description of the man that has proclaimed such a thing, and after being told of the prophet’s appearance and clothing, he promptly proclaims that “It is Elijah the Tishbite,” in verse 8.
There are a lot of lessons to be learned in this chapter of the Bible. The rest of this chapter goes on to tell us about multiple failed attempts by men of Israel to arrest the prophet, a moment of humility that eventually leads to his appearance before the king, and, as promised, Ahaziah’s death and replacement by his brother, Jehoram. This is a story of the importance of humility, the call that the children of God have to stand up for the truth no matter what, and the ultimate lesson of the sovereignty and power of God. However, what I want to focus on here is the simple fact that Ahaziah, a wicked king given to pagan gods, was able to identify a prophet of the Lord so quickly and easily. After all, men who were in a much better place to make such a judgment would end up failing miserably.
The first chapter of the Gospel of John is amazing. The first eighteen verses make up a passage of Scripture that has been inspiring to millions and millions of people; it is an incredible spiritual description of the Person of Christ, the Word who was with God and came to the earth so that men might see the light and hear the Father proclaimed. Verses 5-8 and 15 also talk within this context of the man John the Baptist, one who “was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light,” according to verse 8. After beginning his gospel with such beautiful sentiments, the apostle John turns to a more complete focus on John the Baptist starting in verse 19. Immediately, we find that “the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?'” In fact, this is just the first question; verses 19-23 is actually a summary of an apparent interrogation that took place here, as these men tried to surmise for themselves who this baptizer could be. Eventually, John quotes Isaiah 40:3 to tell them that he is the one who is to “make straight the way of the Lord,” implying (and confirming, to the modern New Testament reader) his importance in God’s plan to bring forth the Christ.
Hold on. If John was such an important person in the plan to reveal the Messiah, how could these men from Jerusalem, specifically sent by the Pharisees according to verse 24, not know who he was? This question is especially pressing when paired with the events that we have already seen take place in 2 Kings 1. If Ahaziah, a pagan and a wicked ruler who had thrown away the law of God, could recognize one of God’s prophets, how could those who were supposed to have been the law’s protectors in John’s day have missed him?
Jesus Himself answers this question later on in the book of John. These are the words of John 3:16-21, the last part of Jesus’s late-night spiritual discussion with Nicodemus:
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.
(Side-note from me: Late-night spiritual discussions are awesome.)
The last three verses of this paragraph are especially relevant to our discussion. It would seem that the Pharisees are lost as to John’s identity, as well as a great many things regarding the plans of Christ, because they have chosen to walk in darkness. They professed a true relationship with God, but they were also pointed out by Jesus in passages such as Matthew 6:5 and 23:5 as hypocrites for being prideful in regards to their prayers and service towards the Father. Of course, Ahaziah wasn’t exactly walking in lockstep with God or His law, either, but at least he thought to make what looks to be a genuine inquiry to some deity regarding his plight! He was incredibly flawed in his spiritual practice, but he at least had a spiritual outlook good enough to recognize a prophet when he saw one. While the leaders of Israel in John the Baptist’s day were more than happy to point to God as the one true God, that was about where their genuine faith stopped. Therefore, when the prophet of the Light, and eventually the Light Himself, came before them, they were none the wiser.
The point is this: in order to recognize Christ and His followers for who they are and the truth for what it is, we have to be searching. In a time of captivity and desperation for the people of Israel, God told them through the prophet Jeremiah, “And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart,” (Jeremiah 29:13). Paul told the church at Corinth that “now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed,” (Romans 13:11). It shouldn’t be hard at all, if we are truly trying to walk in the light. We should never let Jesus or the truth that He died to establish pass us by because we weren’t looking, or especially because we didn’t know what to look for.
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AUTHOR: Luke Tatum
