Sermon Tone Analysis
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Introduction
The world tells us to always fight for yourself.
It will tell us that you must take care of yourself because no one else will.
The world wants us to believe that success is in what you do and where you are.
What if I told you success is not found in what you do for work.
Whether you ever win an event you go to.
Whether you ever own a home, vehicle, have more than a couple dollars to your name, or have a title of any kind.
You do not have to win anything to be great, you do not need to continually compare yourself to other people to see if you are great.
No, we only need to do what the man in this text today did.
Before we get to that I want to ask a question, “Except for Jesus Christ, who is the greatest person who ever lived?”
Google says that Jesus was number one but the next nine are, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Leonardo Da Vinci, Aristotle, Muhammad, Galileo Galilei, Alexander the Great, Charles Darwin, and Plato.
I bet many of you had many different people in your minds.
Maybe Alexander Fleming, the man who invented penicillin.
Maybe Henry Ford, Mother Theresa, Mike Murphy, Sergeant York, or any number of people.
Maybe you thought of men and women of the Bible.
Moses, Daniel, Joseph, Joshua, Paul, or many others.
Well, Jesus gives us this answer in Matt.
11:11 “Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist.”
That is amazing because John was not what most consider great.
He was not among the rich.
He had no power, did not dress like most, he was in the desert in camels hair and ate honey and locusts.
He was what many today would call a religious fanatic and a whack job.
He was a little eccentric and weird.
He was different but he was doing what he was supposed to do.
John was the forerunner of Christ.
As that he was to do three jobs.
Clear the way.
This was to remove obstacles that hindered people believing in the Messiah.
He did this by calling out the religious leaders of the day and speaking the unvarnished truth to people.
Prepare the way.
He pushed false notions to the side and prepared peoples hearts to hear what Jesus was to say.
Get out of the way.
He knew that when Jesus came, he needed to get out of the way.
He needed to submit all to him.
And this is what made him great.
And it is to this last that we look in this sermon titled Decrease to Increase.
We all too often find ourselves trying to be something that we are not because the world tells us that we must do and do to be this great thing.
John knew that was not true and I pray that you will see this amazing truth too as we walk through this section in John 3:22-36
There is a lot in this section but the first thing we see from John is...
God Placed You Where You Are
We see here that Jesus and His disciples went into the Judean countryside and that His disciples were baptizing.
Well, right before this John had just baptized Jesus.
But Jesus had been conducting all His ministry in Galilee and the Temple, not in Judea.
That was the Baptizer’s area.
John’s disciples were baptizing too and they saw Jesus and His disciples baptizing and they had to go tell John.
They were jealous and wanted John to correct this issue.
They wanted him to correct those he had baptized because that was out of their bounds.
They wanted to correct this because it was disturbing them.
They were losing their flocks of people.
They were worried that they were losing their stature.
John answers them with a powerful word in John 3:27, “John answered, “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven.”
All that they had before Jesus and His disciples began baptizing was from God. John was preparing and clearing the way.
Jesus arrived.
It was time to recognize that his role was turning into one to drive people to Jesus and not receive them to himself.
John recognized that what he had been and had been doing was directly from God.
He knew it was not of his own power or skill, but from God alone.
We Christians must always remember the primary focus of our ministry: to exalt Christ and point people to him.
Healthy relationships with other Christians will include our recognition of certain leaders, pastors, and teachers.
But we must always remember that they, too, have the same commission.
We should not allow ourselves to become prideful of the particular church, group, or leader with which we are associated.
And we must do our utmost to resist any kind of competitive spirit.
All of us are under the sovereignty of God.
Envious or bitter comparisons make us ineffective.
Our task is to follow Christ and see that he is exalted.
(Bruce B. Barton, John, Life Application Bible Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1993), 68.)
That is the attitude we all can have when we realize that every good and perfect gift is from the father above.
He is the one who gives and takes.
So when you are in a position of authority know it is because of the Lord.
If that position plays out and something else changes, know God is moving always be watching out for Him and what He si guiding you to do.
John knew that everything we receive is from Him and not us.
You are a talented athlete, from God.
Gifted musician, from God; gifted rodeo athlete, from God; gifted at anything, from God.
He gave and placed you there.
Yes, you worked hard; yes, you committed the time; yes, you stayed the course but it was all from the Lord.
He sustained you and He worked the people in your life to give that to you.
He is the reason, not us.
So why do we get to thinking it is us?
Because we have a worldly mindset still.
We have not been thoroughly cleansed of this because we are in it all day every day.
It is hard to leave.
But we can do it when we learn that...
Serving God is Success Not your Role
In verses 28-29 John makes it clear that they know he was not the Christ but was sent before him.
He also makes it clear that his joy is in that service and now that Jesus has come, his joy is complete.
That is what we can be like when we realize that we as believers are sent before Christ.
What?
You may ask.
We are here to go and be ambassadors for Him.
We are in the ministry of reconciliation.
We are going and sharing Christ because we are His witnesses and must go and seek to make disciples (Matt.
28:18-20; Acts 1:8; 2 Cor.
5:17-21).
We can be joyful when we see others believe and then go on and become a mighty voice for the Lord.
We see that we did our service and we move to another.
We have no idea what the work we do in one may impact later.
What this means is that you go and serve the Lord in all aspects of your life and continue to do so even if you feel that you are not doing anything.
You continue to point to him in all situations.
You show Jesus to all people in all ways imaginable.
Your faith and commitment is serving the Lord and giving Him honor.
Many will laugh and scorn.
They will poke fun at you.
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