Sermon Tone Analysis
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Exegetical Point: John the Baptist must give way to Jesus the Christ.
Receive Jesus for Life, reject him for wrath.
Homiletic Point: As above.
Intro
This passage is probably not somewhere that we tend to camp.
We love to dwell on the truths of the first half of chapter 3, and the compelling story of Nicodemus in his pursuit of eternal life.
This bit isn’t so loved.
Yet,
This bit contains within it such wonderful truths that are connected with what has gone before.
This passage reinforces and summarizes much of what we’ve covered in recent weeks.
It is amazing truth that we need to hear!
We need to hear this again and again and again.
We need it driven into our bones!
We need to bleed this Gospel truth because it is the only hope we have.
If you’re here today and you aren’t a practicing Christian, then this is great news for you, because this is the best news you could ever have!
We want to introduce you to your creator and the one who could be the one who saves you from the mess you have made of life.
If you’re here today as someone who is a casual Christian, maybe your faith isn’t a big part of your life and you have pushed it to the side a bit, today is your opportunity to be reset!
To have your faith rekindled by coming to Jesus.
To have Christ break through the walls you have been putting up in your heart.
If you’re here as a believer today, I have great news for you!
You will be confirmed in your faith.
You’ll be reminded that your struggles and temptations, and our sinful messy lives are not a barrier to Jesus.
You can be refreshed in the truth and revived by your gentle savior.
I’ve divided the passage into four parts for us to look at.
We can draw 4 big applications from this text that will help us take hold of Jesus for life.
1. Go to Jesus (v22-26)
This passage flows on from where Jesus was having a discussion with Nicodemus about eternal life.
Nicodemus was like a mix between a bible college professor and a politician, yet Jesus had to teach him about eternal life.
Jesus taught him that the way to eternal life meant being spiritually reborn and putting your faith in Jesus the Son of God.
This all happened up in Jerusalem after a religious feast called Passover.
But then Jesus and his disciples head out to the next stage of their mission:
So Jesus takes his budding crew of apprentices out into the country side to spend time with them.
Presumably he is teaching them and preparing them.
But seemingly Jesus is teaching the general public too, because they are baptizing people.
If you remember, baptism is a ceremonial washing - an outward sign of being cleansed by God on the inside.
Some kind of misitry had to be taking place in order for all these people to be coming to be baptized.
If you’re familiar with the timeline of Jesus ministry, you would know that John the Baptist was put in prison pretty early on.
So the author Apostle John (don’t confuse the Johns!), drops a little note here to explain this for us.
This was before J-t-B’s imprisonment.
SO they’re out there, each group minding their own business - Jesus and his disciples baptizing over there, and J-t-B’s crew over here.
But there’s a few issues that come up.
So some of John’s disciples get into a theological debate with another Jewish guy.
Given that he is described specifically as a “Jew” it’s pretty safe to say that he represented the prevailing view of the religious establishment.
What are the details of this debate?
We don’t know other than it has something to do with baptizing.
Jewish people of that day practiced many rituals around cleanliness.
Not for hygiene of the body, but for hygiene of their souls.
But the baptisim of John was a pretty new concept, so they were probably having a worldview clash.
Perhaps they were trying figure out of they should sprinkle or dunk people?
Or perhaps if they should baptize infants or not...
Anyway, the detail are unimportant to the story.
It seems that whatever went down, it prompted the disciples of John to take stock of their situation.
The new teacher in the area, Jesus of Nazareth was attracting a crowd, in fact it was a sizable crowd!
An he was baptizing just like they had been doing.
You can almost sense the incredulity!
He comes to John and says “Look Teacher, I know you had lots of nice things to say about that other teacher, but he is stealing all our thunder.
He’s muscling in on our turf!
We’ve always been the ones attracting the crowds and doing the baptisms.
He hasn’t even got the manners to go an do it in a different region, he’s just up the road!”
Even though this disciple is making something of a complaint, or raising his concern, he announces a good turn of events.
This is the way it’s meant to be!
John’s Disciples see this as a problem - but this is great news!
John had announced in chapter 1 that Jesus was the Lamb of God who was anointed by God’s Spirit.
He said that Jesus was a higher rank than himself.
So, it’s a good thing that people were going to Jesus!
What’s so bad about another prophet announcing God’s Word?
What’s wrong with people being convicted of their need for spiritual cleansing?
Even if it wasn’t Jesus, we should never be distraught that there is more of God’s work among his people!
You know what it’s like I’m sure!
Have you ever said “I go to this new church” to someone and they ask “Why is there a new one, don’t we have enough churches already?”
The simple answer is no.
There are non-Christians, so there’s not enough churches.
Even if everyone in this region were Christian, we wouldn’t have enough buildings and leaders and bibles for all of us!
But that’s part of the reason that we as a church are desiring to equip more and more of us so that as people come to Jesus we can be ready to build them up in faith.
We need disciplers and servers and musicians and administrators.
We also need more elders who can watch over the flock!
I am only 1 man.
I love you guys, but there is a limited number of people that I can genuinely care for and engage meaningfully with.
This is a limitation of personality, but also just by virtue of the fact that we’re limited beings with limited abilities.
I need men who will shoulder the responsibility with me.
Men who have come to Christ and been cleansed by him, who are broken sinners like me, but who are relentlessly pursuing a holy life and willing to serve God’s church in Christ-centered leadership.
We need men who would help us all continually follow Jesus.
But let’s ask the question: what if God does not give increase?
What if God keeps us humble by ensuring Flooding Creek stays about the same size while we spend all this time and effort to train and equip one another for the work of ministry?
What if a new bible-teaching church sets up 15 min down the road in, I dunno, Stratford?
Imagine they get a cracking start and it just seems like everybody in town is talking about them.
They’re packing out their meeting place and people are becoming Christians left right and center.
Let’s imagine what that would be like… What would we do?
We could complain… why didn’t they join us… we were in the area first… they’re encroaching on our turf...
Or, we could say “Wow, look at what God is doing!
Jesus is saving so many people, it seems like everyone is going to Jesus!”
That would be fantastic news, even if it felt like our church community got the short end of the stick.
I would like to think, that instead of being bitter, we would see the power of God at work and get on His programme.
Maybe we would send our most gifted people out to serve there.
Maybe we would close down what we’re doing so that we could be part of what God was doing over there.
We want to see Jesus Kingdom increase, not our own!
We want people to come to Jesus, not to Flooding Creek.
Something less out-there, and more likely for us is that we will see people move away.
It can feel like wasted energy equipping people only to have them move to another church, or their contract isn't renewed so they move away, or defense posts them out.
We can become bitter because we feel like we’re sitting here spinning our ministry wheels while God is doing something elsewhere.
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