John the Baptist grew up knowing his mission. He also knew that his cousin Jesus was the Messiah, so his job was to prepare the way for Him.
Matthew (another cousin of Jesus) tells us that John began his ministry traveling the Wilderness of Judea. That term refers to a specific area along the western shore of the Dead Sea, mostly up on the heights in a range that runs into the Hill Country. This stands to reason, since John was born there in the Hill Country (the hilly range between Hebron and Bethlehem).
Would you believe that we can’t actually nail down with precision just what Luke refers to at the start of his version of this story (Luke 3)? We can’t climb inside his head and grasp the reckoning he used. Does he count the years Tiberius Caesar co-reigned with Augustus, or is it based on his official coronation? There’s a lot of debate, but I take the position John began his ministry around AD 26-27.
Keep in mind that his father was a priest, so John was of the priestly clan, even if he didn’t take the path of training for priesthood. There is a strong representation of prophets from among the priests in the Old Testament. This figures into John’s public persona. The prophecies required John to begin his ministry in the wilderness areas. There were some small villages in that area, and news of his preaching spread quickly. The primary reason is that Messianic speculation was already strong among Jews, so anyone who heard John was likely to pass on the word.
Matthew’s description of him is loaded with symbolic terms that emphasized the simple asceticism of John’s life. He was so driven by his preaching mission that he never took the time to worry too much about the comforts of life. Outer garments made from the woven fabric of camel’s hair were exceedingly durable, but also quite plain, with their distinctive brownish color. If we understand the angel’s instructions to Zacharias as short-hand for John becoming a Nazarite, then his eating habits would be a good match. The phrase simply indicates that John never put much time or effort into worrying about food, but took what God provided in the wild. This was far from the typical grape-growing terrain.
John eventually worked his way down to the lower Jordan River where he began calling the penitent to engage in the common Hebrew cleansing ritual. But instead of doing so only near the Temple, as most Jewish men would stop to bathe on the way to worship, John was calling them to do it out in the open, far from the Temple. More than precautionary cleansing, he made the ritual represent a very genuine and austere repentance.
So when the religious partisans began showing up, they brought the same attitude as men on their way to the Temple, just trying to check off all the boxes for the sake of keeping the rules, John hammered them with demands that they actually repent according to the Covenant. He said this wasn’t about their genetic heritage. The signifying mark of God’s people was the Covenant, not their DNA. He warned about the wrath of God coming to destroy people who refused to humble themselves before Him. The Pharisees and Sadducees were notorious for teaching that God owed them something.
This ministry went on for some time. Onto this scene Jesus appears, and John recognizes Him instantly as He approaches for the ritual. John argued that it was he who needed the baptism of fire that the Messiah would bring. What was the Messiah doing here repenting? Jesus told John to play along, that the reason for coming to be baptized was a matter of fulfilling the Covenant,as John preached. Jesus was going to insist on operating under the same Covenant His nation had rejected over the centuries. John’s response was, “I don’t get it, but okay.”
Then Matthew describes a scene that would clearly justify it all to John. What words would you use to explain that a dimensional portal opened in the air above this scene? Anyone with eyes could see clearly that it was no mere parting of clouds, but something qualitatively different, reaching across from Eternity itself. Something came through that opening, moving rather like a dove descending to the ground, but was no ordinary bird.
Matthew affirms that this was the Spirit of God, a visible anointing carried out precisely so people could witness it. And for those capable of discerning it, a voice thundered from above with divine authority: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” John witnessed it; so did those who by now were his disciples. Some in the crowd caught on to what they had just experienced, and told others about it. Only those who took John’s ministry seriously would have this privilege.
John’s Gospel (written by yet another cousin of Jesus) gives us a more dramatic account of the days surrounding this whole thing. Jesus had come and gone a couple of times while John was prophesying and baptizing. During that time, John faced some queries from the Sanhedrin. They asked if he claimed to be the Messiah or Elijah, but he denied it. Instead, he cited the passage in Isaiah 40:3, and noted that the Messiah was somewhere among the Jewish people that very day.
Later, John recognized his cousin Jesus as the Passover Lamb. As the Jewish leaders continued pestering him, John the Baptist explained his mission in terms they could grasp, without getting himself into trouble. The phrasing is a little hard to translate into English, but it amounts to John the Baptist saying (John 1:29-34) that he lacked full certainty of just who his cousin was until that moment of baptism. Thus, this business of repentance and ritual washing was a way to draw a crowd who would be there to witness that moment.
This was God’s planning, telling John to run this kind of ministry precisely so He could manifest His anointing away from the tight throttling control of the Jewish government. It could have been done in the Temple, but the Father wanted to show how He wasn’t bound by the false assumptions of the Talmudic teachings. This broke all the rules, and they couldn’t argue against something hundreds of people witnessed first hand.
I had more than one religion teacher point out that John usually preached in out-of-the-way places, not near metropolitan areas, where the establishment religious and civic leaders would have a dense presence. The reasons are pretty obvious.