1:23
People come with all sorts of preconceived ideas, and when they see something, in this case John the Baptist, they want to fit that thing into their existing framework. They needed to see things differently. So John the Baptist refused to be pigeon holed, and gave them the Biblical lens through which he should be viewed. John replied with the words if Isaiah 40:3, he was the voice in the wilderness, calling on the people to make straight the way for the Lord. Note that the synoptic gospels also state this as the summary of the ministry of John the Baptist: Matt 3:3; Mark 1:3; Lk 3:4). John’s gospel is different from the synoptics, but it is entirely consistent with them. There are two key things the religious leaders needed to learn. One was that the voice of God was crying out in the wilderness, the “established religion” was not proclaiming the word of God. That this was true was demonstrated on numerous occasions in the conflicts between Jesus, the Son of God, and the religious leaders. The other was that the Lord was coming, therefore the time to get things ready was now!
1:24
The exact translation of 1:14 is uncertain, NIV has: “Now the Pharisees who had been sent”, ESV has “Now they had been sent from the Pharisees”. ESV seems unlikely, for while the Pharisees were a very important and influential group within the Sanhedrin, they were not politically strong enough to have sent a delegation to inquire of John the Baptist. Carson thinks that the most likely meaning is “Some Pharisees who were in the delegation asked him”, this is more or less what the NIV says.
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