Now we need to see the turn of the priesthood from the Old Testament to the New Testament in John the Baptist. John’s father was a priest named Zachariah, who was serving in the priesthood according to the Old Testament. He and his wife Elizabeth were both advanced in age (Luke 1:5-7). Elizabeth could not have a child, so Zachariah prayed for his wife to bear him a son, and the Lord heard him (v. 13). God performed a miracle by giving them a son whose name was John. He answered their prayer not only according to their will but also according to His economy.
John was born a priest. Zachariah surely was happy that he had a son who could become his successor in the priesthood. According to God’s regulation in the Old Testament, a priest began an apprenticeship at the age of twenty-five (Num. 8:24), and he learned how to practice the priesthood for five years. Then at the age of thirty, he became a formal priest (Num. 4:3). Zachariah and Elizabeth surely expected to see their son enter into an apprenticeship at the age of twenty-five to learn how to be a priest and eventually become a priest at the age of thirty.
The ordinances of the Old Testament priesthood had already been formed and established, but John the Baptist did not live or work according to this religious and cultured way (Matt. 3:1-6). Since John the Baptist was born a priest, he should have remained in the temple, which would have been a joy to his father Zachariah. This is what Samuel did in the Old Testament when he was a child (1 Sam. 2:18). Instead, John the Baptist stayed in the wilderness, a “wild” place where there was no culture or religion. John the Baptist should have worn the priestly robe, but instead he wore a garment of camel’s hair (Matt. 3:4). The camel was considered to be unclean under the Levitical regulations. This garment of camel’s hair would have offended all the priests. Furthermore, John the Baptist did not eat the priestly food, which was composed mainly of fine flour and the meat of the sacrifices offered to God by His people (Lev. 2:1-3; 6:16-18, 25-26; 7:31-34). Instead, his food was locusts and wild honey, not cultivated honey (Matt. 3:4). Even the honey that he ate was wild.
John should have performed the priestly service, to offer bulls and goats as sacrifices, to arrange the showbread in the Holy Place, to trim the lamps for the light, and to burn the incense to God. Instead, he worked wildly, baptizing people into water. What John did as a work was rough and wild. People went to John from Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the districts of the Jordan. He told them to repent for the kingdom of the heavens. After they repented, he “threw” them into the water. This was a wild activity. No one in history had ever baptized people into water until John came. Zachariah and Elizabeth could have thought that their son John was “naughty.” Instead of serving with Zachariah in the temple, he stayed in a wild place, wore wild clothing, ate wild food, and did a wild work. This surely offended the Old Testament priesthood.
In John the Baptist, we see the turn of the priesthood from the Old Testament to the New Testament. The Old Testament was officially and formally ordained by God, and it had been practiced for many, many years. With John the Baptist, however, everything was uncivilized, uncultured, and not according to the religious regulations of the Old Testament priesthood. In the eyes of God, the Old Testament priesthood lasted until John the Baptist. John’s work indicated that he did not want anything to do with the holy temple, the holy clothing, the holy diet, and the holy sacrifices of the Old Testament. The Old Testament priests handled the offerings, washed at the laver, and entered the Holy Place to arrange the showbread, tend the lampstand, and burn the incense before God at the incense altar. This service was very cultured and religious, but John the Baptist gave this up. With him there was no culture or religion. Everything was new with him. Where he lived, what he wore, what he ate, and how he worked ended the Old Testament priesthood.
John the Baptist denied the entire Old Testament priesthood, but his work was the beginning of the priesthood in the New Testament (Mark 1:1-4). He preached the baptism of repentance for forgiveness of sins as the gospel of Jesus Christ. His ministry was “the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1). He did not offer bulls and goats as sacrifices (Heb. 10:1-4), but he offered sinners saved through his preaching as sacrifices (Mark 1:5). John the Baptist brought people to Christ as the One stronger than he was and as the One baptizing the repentant people in the Holy Spirit for imparting life (Mark 1:7-8). The first New Testament priest of the gospel of God was John the Baptist, the forerunner of the Lord Jesus. He was the ending of the Old Testament priesthood and the beginning of the New Testament priesthood. From the time of John the Baptist, the priesthood is no longer busy with animal sacrifices. From that time on, the New Testament priesthood is busy with the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the gospel of God.