G'day and welcome to stories of a faithful God for kids.

Dave here.

It's great to have you back.

Imagine missing the most important person in

the world just because you didn't recognize them.

It's a person who will change your life, but you don't know who they are.

You've missed the most important opportunity you'll ever get.

Let me put it a different way.

I want you to imagine you're a spy and you

have to go and meet someone at the airport.

This person's going to get you away from

danger.

The only problem is you've never met them

before.

You could accidentally start chatting with a

normal everyday person.

Or worse, you could end up going with an enemy

spy.

You really don't want that to happen.

So to make sure it doesnt happen, your boss pulls you aside and says.

To you, now listen very carefully, I will say this only once or twice, maybe three times if

you really need it.

When you get to the airport you will be met by

a tall, dark stranger with five pimples on the left side of his nose.

He will walk with a limp and be carrying a bunch of roses.

He will say to you, the moon always shines brightest in the daytime and you will reply,

yes, but only when the cows are barking like a dog.

Then he will give you the flowers and you will go with him.

I don't know if spies work like that in real life, but I've seen them do it in the movies.

The point is they need to have enough clues so that they know exactly who the right person is

when they arrive.

When God planned to send his son Jesus into

the world, he wanted people to know who he was.

He didn't want people to get it wrong.

God didn't send Jesus for a holiday.

Jesus came so that we could properly know and trust God to make us into children of God, to

save us from death and give us life forever.

It would be so terrible to miss out on that.

And so all through the Old Testament, God left clues, things that would show you when you see

a person like this doing these sort of things, he's the one to start listening to.

If God lied or made mistakes, those clues wouldn't be very helpful.

But because he always tells the truth because he's faithful, then his clues are perfect.

And we're going to see some of them today.

Get ready for our next episode of stories of a

faithful God for kids.

To get people ready for Jesus, God called a

man named John, not the John who wrote the gospel, a different John.

John the Baptist he's called that because he was baptizing people.

That means he was dunking them in water as a sign that they wanted to stop sinning and

start living God's way.

And heaps and heaps of people were going out

to see him and be baptized.

After a while, the religious leaders from the

capital city, Jerusalem, think to themselves, we need to go and check this guy out.

After all, they've read their old testaments.

They know that God promised to send certain

people.

He'd left clues so he could recognize those

people.

And they're wondering, could John be one of

them? The biggest person they're wondering about is

someone called the Christ.

Christ is a funny kind of word.

It means oily one, the person with oil on them, not oil like they use in engines.

It's the sort of oil that you cook with.

In the Old Testament, if God chose someone for

a very important job was shown by having someone pour oil on their head.

It's called anointing.

In fact, it sometimes even happens today.

Last year, the king of England, King Charles III, was crowned.

And during the ceremony, they poured oil on his head.

They anointed him.

Well, God had promised that someone would

come, an anointed one, a christ.

And this christ would deal with all the

problems in the world, all the sin, all the ways people ignore God, all the unfairness.

He'd make everything right and he'd become the anointed king of the whole world.

And these leaders are wondering, could John the Baptist be the Christ?

That'd be pretty big news.

So they send people to ask who he is.

Chapter one, verse 20 says John spoke freely and did not refuse to answer.

He said, clearly, I am not the Christ.

Oh, um, oh, well, but hang on a minute.

Maybe he's someone else that God talked about, verse 21 says, so they asked him then, who are

you? Are you Elijah, Elijah?

Thats a pretty weird question to ask.

The very first series of stories of a faithful

God looked at the prophet Elijah.

He lived about 750 years before Jesus came

into the world.

How old do they think John the Baptist is?

Its not as weird a question as it sounds, though, for a couple of reasons.

The first is that the prophet Elijah never actually died.

Instead of dying, God sent a chariot of fire down to earth to pick him up and take him to

heaven.

He's still alive today.

So maybe God sent him back.

The second reason it's not such a weird

question is that God actually said Elijah would come back.

In the very last book of the Old Testament in Malachi, in the very last chapter of the Old

Testament, God says that he, God, is coming to earth.

God will punish all evil people who've ignored him and save all his people who've trusted

him.

God says that before he comes, Elijah will

come, and he'll encourage people to stop sinning and start living God's way.

And that's exactly what John's been doing.

But John's not actually Elijah.

He's not the guy who got taken up into heaven.

And so he tells the guys, nah, I'm not Elijah.

So then they think about another thing that God said.

Way back when God had Moses leading the Israelites, Moses told the people about

someone who would come in the future.

Just like Elijah.

Moses was a prophet.

And God said that one day a prophet like Moses

would come.

In deuteronomy, chapter 18, verse 18, God said

to Moses, I will give them a prophet like you.

He will be one of their own people.

I will tell him what to say, and he will tell them everything I command.

This prophet will speak for me.

And then God gives a warning.

He says, anyone who does not listen when he speaks will answer to me.

So when the prophet shows up, you'd better listen, right?

That's why in John chapter one, verse 21, the men ask John, are you the prophet?

And again, he's like, no, not me.

By now, they might be getting a little bit

frustrated, although maybe instead of just throwing suggestions at him, they should just,

you know, ask.

Which is what they finally do in verse 22,

they say, who are you? Give us an answer to.

Tell those who sent us.

What do you say about yourself finally?

Let that be a lesson.

Don't try and guess what someone's thinking.

Just ask.

Now, so far, they've been thinking along the

right track.

They've been right to be looking in their

bibles to find out if John is one of the people God promised to send.

Their only problem is they haven't looked at the right promise.

So John tells them exactly where God spoke about him.

It's in the Old Testament book of Isaiah.

It's from Isaiah 43.

John tells them, I am the voice of a man calling out in the desert, make the road

straight for the Lord.

Hmm.

Let me read that again.

John says, I am the voice of a man calling out

in the desert, make the road straight for the Lord.

Hmm.

If you think about that passage, you'll notice

something.

Did you notice how even though it talks about

the man, the man who John says he is, the man actually isn't the most important person in

the passage the most important person is the one who the man is getting people ready for.

Did you hear who he's getting people ready for?

He's getting people ready for the Lord.

He's getting people ready for God.

So as important as John is, the person coming after him is far more important.

Some of the men listening, they can't stop thinking about John.

They think either he's one of the important people we've talked about or he's not that

important.

In fact, if he's not one of those people, he

probably doesn't have any right to go around baptizing people.

It's like if you got up and started trying to be the teacher in your class, people might

start asking, who do you think you are? So in verse 25, they say to John, you say

you're not the Christ.

You say you're not Elijah or the prophet.

Then why do you baptise people? And John's like, you have missed the point.

You keep thinking about me, but if you stop for 5 seconds and think about what the Old

Testament is saying about me, you should start looking for the one who's coming after me.

And so he tries again to get them thinking about who's coming next.

In verse 26, he answers, I baptise people with water, but there's one here with you that you

don't know.

He's the one who comes after me.

I'm not good enough to untie the strings of his sandals.

John doesn't care if people think he's not very important.

In fact, compared to the one coming, he isn't very important.

That's why he keeps trying to get people looking for that person, the one who comes

next.

So John says he is someone who God left clues

about.

He's the one who's getting people ready to

meet God and the very next day, that is, who arrives.

Except, as we saw in the last episode, people might be a bit surprised because it's not like

God turns up in a giant pillar of cloud and fire like he did in Exodus.

No, the person who John sees is a man, someone who looks just like an ordinary man.

But because John listens to God and all the clues God's given, he isn't put off.

When he sees Jesus, he gets super excited and he says some words that we actually talked

about in our Exodus series.

He calls Jesus the lamb of God who takes away

the sin of the world.

Because remember, Jesus hasn't come for a

holiday.

He's come to bring God's kindness and save us

from our sin.

Let me read to you, what happens?

Verse 29 says, the next day, John saw Jesus coming toward him.

John said, look, the lamb of God.

He takes away the sin of the world.

This is the one I was talking about.

I said, a man will come after me, but he is

greater than I am because he was living before me.

You may be wondering if Jesus looks so normal, so normal that you could pass him in the

street without even noticing.

Then how does John know who he is?

Thankfully, John tells us.

And again, it's because God gave him a clue.

In verse 32, John says, I did not know who the Christ was, but God sent me to baptize with

water.

And God told me, you will see the spirit come

down and rest on a man.

That man is the one who will baptize with the

Holy Spirit.

John said, I saw the spirit come down from

heaven.

The spirit looked like a dove and rested on

him.

I have seen this happen.

So I tell people he is the son of God.

Woah.

This is a seriously big deal.

God had said in the Old Testament, in Isaiah,

that someone would come to prepare a way for him.

And John's come preparing the way, which means the person he points to is the Lord.

God also told John who he had to look out for, the one who he sees the Holy Spirit come down

on.

And now that's happened too.

You know, sometimes people will speak as though Jesus is just a fairy tale make

believe.

There's no way of knowing that he's God.

But actually God's been really kind for us.

He's left heaps of clues in the Old Testament

and even the New Testament that show us who Jesus is.

Over and over and over again, God made promises about what to look for when Jesus

came, and over and over and over again, Jesus kept those promises.

He's faithful.

You can trust God.

You can trust that Jesus really is who the Bible says he is.

You can trust Jesus because he is the God who John the Baptist was getting people ready for.

Back in John's day, John the Baptist is thinking, great, I've done my job, I got

people ready and now the really important person is here.

He expects that people will stop following him and start following Jesus.

They will need a bit of a push.

Once it gets going though, the number of

people following Jesus is going to grow really quickly.

But thats a story for next time.

Hi again, I hope you really enjoyed that

episode.

I want to tell you about something ive just

set up on Spotify.

It's a playlist of songs that I think fit with

lots of the things we talk about in the show.

There are songs and memory verses about how

God is faithful.

There are songs that link to specific Bible

passages we've discussed.

For example, in the last episode we talked

about how God is always three and always one, what we call the Trinity.

Well, there's a few songs on there about the trinity.

There's one called God United, another one called Rev. Master T's trinity Mashmix, and

another one called three in one.

There's a whole bunch of songs on the

playlist.

If I talk about something on the show and you

think hey, I know a great song about that, let me know.

Go to the website@faithfulgod.net and send me a song request.

I'll have a listen and if it works, I'll throw it on the playlist.

The playlist is called SFG, as in stories of a faithful God.

SFG for kids.

Check it out.

SFG for kids.

If you've listened to the last episode, don't

forget to follow the link in the show notes to fill in the survey we talked about there you

can put in up to three things that you love that God made through Jesus.

If you go and fill it in, then next week I'll be reading out your answers and giving you a

shout out on the show.

Grown ups.

Thanks for letting your kids listen to the show.

I hope it's really helpful for them and for you.

I'd love your feedback and or encouragement.

I read all the ratings and reviews that come

through on Apple and Spotify and you can also send a direct message through the contact

page@faithfulgod.net dot if the show is helpful, would you consider donating $5 or $10

a month to help me keep producing the content? Just the cost of a cup of coffee or a

streaming service? Five or $10 a month of course.

I'm always happy to take more $20 a million dollars.

I don't want you to feel like I'm restricting you somehow, but if you can donate five or $10

a month, that would be really greatly appreciated.

You can donate by going to the support page of Faithfulgod.net or by following the link in

the show notes.

Dont forget the longer podcast stories of a

faithful God.

Its a bit of a deeper dive into the passages.

Great for a trip to work or while doing the washing.

And dont forget you can follow stories of a faithful God on Facebook and Instagram.

Bye for now.