Why did people think Jesus was John the Baptist?

Luke 9:7-20 · 2025-04-04 · Jason Wolin · Q&A

Luke 9:7-20 · Jesus. Why did people think Jesus was John the Baptist? — sermon from Cypress Bible Church on BibleSlides.

Why did people think Jesus was John the Baptist? Okay, here’s a sermon question from Luke chapter 9 and I’m going to summarize this. In Luke 9 Jesus asks the people who do people say that I am and one of the responses is that some think that Jesus is John the Baptist. Now the questioner asks, John the Baptist never does a miracle so why would people confuse John the Baptist with Jesus. Great, great question, I love John the Baptist and it gives me opportunity to talk about him. Think about John the Baptist. He was born of the family or the father his father was Zachariah so he’s born as part of the priestly line. His birth was miraculous, that in and of itself kind of kicks off his ministry. He had that Nazarite Vow; where he goes out into the wilderness and has eats locust and wild honey and he wears the the the camel garments doesn’t cut his hair. So all that’s kind of the setup for his ministry. But clearly John the Baptist is a man of towering character and strength of personality such that people would leave their homes in Jerusalem leave their comfortable settings in Galilee and come down out into the wilderness just to hear this guy preach. He had so much courage to confront the religious establishment of the day and to confront even Herod on his marriage relationship with his wife. And I think that was just such an attractive thing that people just flocked to him so much so that he had to say, “Jesus, you must increase I must decrease” he’s pushing followers away from him saying, “no, you go follow Christ.” So I think there was this attractiveness to John. It was a prophetic nature of how he interacted with the people such that it would be easy to confuse him with Jesus – just in terms of his strength of personality and the way in which he so boldly proclaimed the kingdom of God. By the way the same message that Jesus preached; repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. But I think maybe the most likely answer to this question, of why did people confuse him with John the Baptist, could actually come from Herod himself. Do you remember Herod put John the Baptist to death and we are told that after he did this and heard of Jesus he assumed that John the Baptist had risen from the dead and began performing miracles because he was so guilty for having put John to death. And again I think this just is a testimony to the power and the strength and the absolute winsomeness of the person of John the Baptist. It so impressed Herod that when he put him to death he knew he had done something wrong. He knew he had put to death a man of God. So I think that this and I think maybe even Herod himself began spreading this rumor that John had come back from the dead or those who had heard him…

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