Sadly, this was the question posed by John the Baptist while he was in prison to Jesus Christ our Messiah in Matthew 11 verse 3. It was this John that revealed Christ to the nation, but how quickly what we know can change.
Most Jews in the day of Christ our Lord had a different conception of the Messiah when He shall come. Their understanding was politically inclined, for they were looking forward to a Messiah that will restore the kingdom of Israel. Such conception ran deep in the national consciousness of the Jews. Even Jonah when he was sent by God to Nineveh, he disobeyed because he would rather have Nineveh punished than spared because they were among the tormentors of Israel.
Often times our misconceptions of God get us clouded, and we could see that both the spiritual leaders and the laity were not spared in the Jewish experience. By reason of their experience in the hands of tormentors, they did not understand the ways of God. When the Messiah came among them, they did not perceive Him or receive Him. We saw this play out at the end of John the Baptist’s ministry in the question he posed to Christ. Even the Apostles, before Christ ascended, were still asking when will He restore the kingdom to Israel. But Christ changed their perception and made them to know that the kingdom He has come to restore is that of God.
It is possible in our dispensation to fall into the same errors of the Jews and intermingle with the affairs of this world and not allow the kingdom of God to fester in us. John intermingled with the political system, he got imprisoned and sadly was killed. Our Lord Jesus never intermingled with political affairs, He was faced with the kingdom work and what a hope and deliverance He brought to the people. Our Lord Jesus told one of the disciples let the dead bury their dead, and he should rather follow Him. That seems a tall order in our dispensation, we want to do our thing, prove our point, speak up and so on. But this is a call to all those who believes, to follow Him and allow the dominion of His kingdom in us to dominate and influence our environment.
Citing our present national experience, we should let politicians sort their own thing out while we rather pray for the kingdom of God to come and dominate and rule over the affairs of the nation so that we God’s people might lead a quiet and peaceable life. But there is a catch here, we cannot live life that is not of the kingdom and desire that the kingdom should manifest and overrule. If my people that are called by my name says the Lord will humble themselves and repent and turn from their wicked ways, then I will heal their land. God does not delight in hypocrisy. Until those that believe in Christ remove first the log from their eyes, they have no moral ground to point to the speck in another person’s eye. Someone might say, but I don’t believe in Christ, it matters not, the principle is the same.
The testimony of John the Baptist is a lesson for us that we should not depart from the faith. John had this testimony, there was no man born of a woman that is greater than him yet, because he did not end in faith in Christ and in the kingdom of God that He represents, our Lord Jesus said the least in the kingdom is greater than him. How we end matters. So then our faith in its correct perspectives is vitally important. We should not let our focus be swayed by permutations of men or any such external distraction. For as we see the day of the Lord approaching, there will be many distractions, but the people that know their God will be strong and do exploits.
We are to hold on to Christ in our faith, seek first the kingdom of God and the reign of His righteousness and peace first in us and then in our community and God will heal our land and grant us what we desire of Him.
