The Only Way to Live a Joyful Christian Life

Oh, I’m glad you, it’s, you know, when I will see you guys welcoming each other and saying, you know, one reason we do this, the meet and greet is sometimes, first of all, we want to make sure nobody comes in here and doesn’t get a touch from somebody. And the other is, is sometimes our folks just want to say hey to somebody because they like seeing each other. And some of y’all haven’t seen each other since maybe last Sunday. So you want to kind of catch up a little bit. So I just think it’s so neat when we do that.

A couple things I want you to pray about as we go to our time of prayer this morning. Of course, pray for our pastor. Always pray for him and Becca. This past weekend, they went to a kind of a marriage enrichment retreat that’s put on for pastors across the state. The South Carolina Baptist Convention does this. Beth and I used to go to those all the time. And they help. You know, sometimes you just need to get a break away and just be together and kind of be ministered to. You know, sometimes the pastor, he does all the ministering. And he’s going, going. And sometimes the pastor just needs to relax and be ministered to. And they got a little bit of that this weekend. So just keep them always in your prayers.

And then everybody here came in with some baggage this morning. Something that you’re dealing with that you want to give to the Lord. And this is going to be that time to do that. You know, prayer is both ways. It’s you giving your request to God. And then the second way is listening to what He has for you. But what I want you to do this morning, I want you to get together like we normally do. If you find somebody that’s kind of sitting by themselves, somebody make their way over to them. And then just pray together. And just whatever’s on your heart today. Of course, pray for our pastor. Pray for just some things you’re dealing with. Maybe even with the Lord. Time to go to Him. So let’s kind of get together and let’s pray.

Father, it does my heart so much good. I see our people praying. Can’t even imagine what it does to Your heart. People just talk to You. They will talk to anyone else. If they have that kind of relationship with You. Father, help us to just come to that place where we have that relationship with You. No matter what’s on our heart, what’s burdening our lives, how we feel just twisted sometimes by the world, that we have You. If You’ve got nobody else, we’ve got You. Because You always got us. So, Father, we come now to a time of worship. It’s about You. You’re the only one that’s really worthy. Receive honor and praise and glory. That’s what we want to do. So open our hearts and our minds, number one, to hear You clearly. And that when we go out of here, we’ll be a little bit different. And the world will notice. So thank You so much. Just being the God that You are. Oh, thank You. So now we give this time to You in Your son’s most holy and precious name. And all God’s people said, amen.

If you’re in business or kind of a young person in business, maybe you’ve heard of the name of Simon Sinek. Simon Sinek is one of those kind of guys that just he is like a motivational speaker for major corporations. He’ll go in and realign some things. He’s a lot of times works in corporations that have hundreds of thousands of employees. And a couple of weeks ago, I heard him tell a story online that I thought you might find interesting. I think very often companies can risk becoming reactive to things that happen in the marketplace. So here’s a great example, right? Let’s use a real-life example. BlackBerry was a really fantastic company who built a really fantastic product with a really clear sense of vision, which is we make strong, secure, extremely reliable products. And if you remember, if you ever had a BlackBerry, you could throw that thing across the room, drop it on the street, and it just didn’t break. It just kept working. It was the most reliable product on the marketplace. You could type on the full QWERTY keyboard without even looking down. You could send a whole email. And governments and big businesses loved it because it was really secure and really reliable. Then the iPhone showed up, and the iPhone was the new shiny object. And BlackBerry, instead of sticking to their core and their beliefs, became distracted by the shiny popularity of the iPhone, which is a completely different animal serving a completely different audience. And they started trying to copy iPhone. So they started putting apps on their BlackBerrys, which what did it do? Made it slow and sluggish. Then they started coming out with flat screens. You’re not going to make a better iPhone than an iPhone. And they basically destroyed their company because they completely went off the reservation and abandoned their fantastic cause.

There could be two marketplaces where you have the shiny object of the iPhone that we use in our personal lives, and our companies prefer that we use a BlackBerry because it’s reliable, it’s safe, and it’s really, really strong. And we could have had two dominant players for two dominant reasons, like a PC and a Mac. Two dominant players for two different reasons. But they didn’t. They got distracted. And I can imagine that their business people were saying, you know, business is moving at light speed. We have to react. Or we can work to advance our cause in a different way and not become distracted. And that’s part of the hard thing, which is, are we stuck in our old ways or are we actually sticking to our long-term vision? That’s part of the difficulty of business, to know the difference. Interesting story, isn’t it?

I want to tell you a story today. I want to tell you a story today in Scripture that sometimes we just kind of gloss over. It’s about a guy by the name of John the Baptist. Now, we know who he is and some things about him, but he’s usually glossed over. He, you know, he’s there when He baptizes Jesus and he’s there kind of preaching. But we don’t really understand who he is. And what I want to do today is through Scripture show you how if we can sometimes be a little bit more like who John the Baptist was, we can be used more by the Lord.

So, if you’ve got your Bibles, I’d like you to turn with me to the book of John chapter 3. We’re going to be looking at verses 22 through 30. I just found this, I got kind of reacquainted with this passage a number of weeks ago, and it just grabbed my heart because it really spoke to me about some things I probably need to be doing in my life. And so, the way I, what I entitled the sermon is the only way to live a joyful Christian life because John will address that in his own life in this passage. So, again, John chapter 3, starting with verse 22. If you’ll stand for the, in honor of the reading of God’s Word, thank you for doing that.

Verse 22. And after this, Jesus and His disciples went to the Judean countryside where He spent time with them and baptized. And John was also baptizing in Aenon near Salim because there was plenty of water there. People were coming and being baptized since John had not yet been thrown into prison. Then a dispute arose between John’s disciples and a Jew about purification. And so, they came to John and told him, Rabbi, the one you testified about and who was with you across the Jordan, He’s baptizing. And everyone is going to Him. And John responded, no one can receive anything unless it has been given to him from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I am. said, I am not the Messiah, but I have been sent ahead of Him. He who has the bride is the groom, but the groom’s friend who stands by and listens for Him rejoices greatly at the groom’s voice. So this joy of mine is complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.

Thank you for standing for the word of God. Please be seated. John, in this passage, talks about the kingdom of God, and in it, He will tell us a couple of essentials that I think I’m not seeing. Sometimes not in churches, not in people’s lives today. Not just what our place is, but sometimes even what our place isn’t as a church.

Now, so where are we? Well, we’re dropped dead center into the middle of a dispute. John the baptizer is well-known, well-liked. His popularity, folks, I want to tell you, is off the charts. And for a brief period of time, we understand this part of history of Scripture, Jesus and John are literally kind of doing the same thing, kind of in the same area. Now, where this takes place is about halfway Between Jerusalem and Judea, up there, you know, around the Sea of Galilee. So this is kind of about halfway in between the two. Jesus was not baptizing, but His disciples were. You know, they talked about how Jesus and His disciples are baptized. Jesus, I guess, is teaching them by example, but they’re the ones doing the baptizing. And it’s right after Passover. If you know it’s right, the beginning part of this particular chapter is Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus. And so that’s kind of the context of the passage.

Let me ask you this. Why is it such a big deal about John the Baptist? I mean, who was John the Baptist? I mean, we kind of know a little bit about him. Let me just share some things with you. Luke 1:5 through 25. As with Jesus, His birth is meticulously recorded. His entrance into the world was marked by angelic proclamation and divine intervention. John’s birth not only parallels that of Jesus, but echoes the momentous occasion of the birth of even Isaac to Abraham and Sarah. And John is a pivotal figure in the way that he was in the world. And he said, “The salvation history of God.”

What’s interesting about John the Baptist’s ministry? It ends nearly 400 years of prophetic silence. Between Malachi and Matthew, it’s about 400 years, and there ain’t a prophet on the scene. And then John shows up. He was the voice crying in the wilderness, preparing the way for the coming of the Messiah. And the central theme of his ministry was these words, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” Which is the exact words that when Jesus showed up, He pointed to Him and said, “The kingdom of heaven is near.”

His lifestyle was pretty strange. He was an ascetic living in the wilderness, clothed in camel hair, and subsisting on locusts and wild honey. Did that sound really good? The honey I couldn’t deal with. Bugs? Not so much. And unlike Jesus, he expected people to come to him. Jesus went to people.

Now, here’s the deal about how, why we are even discussing him. This is what Jesus, who’s His cousin, says about him. “I tell you, among those born of women, there is no one greater than John. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is even greater than he.” Now, I’m thinking if Jesus says that nobody’s ever been born of a woman that’s greater than you, that’s pretty significant. I don’t know what that is to me anyway. He would die a martyr’s death, but he would also come in the power of Elijah.

So, that’s kind of the context. That’s who we’re talking about today. And really, out of this passage, I just want to come up with briefly two, that’s what I think comes here. Basically, two things that we need to understand as far as being a church and being just Christians.

Number one is this: there was no competition in the kingdom of heaven. I just think that’s awesome to me. So many times we look at other churches as the enemy. How many people are they running? How many people are we running? Did you go by the church and see how many cars were in their parking lot? That’s pretty much what is happening to John here. His own disciples are coming and saying, “Have you seen how many people are with Jesus? Hey, we’re the big gun here. We’re the one. We were here first.” You know, some people have estimated that up to 300,000 people at one time or another were seen by John the Baptist. He was baptizing off the charts. And now his disciples are going, “This guy’s got more than you got.” But to John, it wasn’t about competition.

You know, I spent five years. I was raised a military brat. I was ROTC. I spent five years in the army. And I want to tell you, and I know if I’m talking to some war veterans here, when you’re in a fight, you want people next to you. And sometimes I think as the church and I think as Christians, we forget we are constantly every day in a fight. It’s a spiritual battle. It’s spiritual warfare. And it’s a whole different ball game. But we ought to want extra people with us. If they’re on another corner or whatever, there’s enough.

And I want to tell you something else I know about Charleston and this area. There’s enough lost people out there who don’t know the Lord that if they decide that they want one day to say, “I’m going to show up for church.” There ain’t enough churches here, folks.

They say, if you were… I know when I was at Pinecrest, which is right in the middle of West Ashley, pastoring there, they did a survey. And they said that within five, there was like, I’m trying to think how many million people within a five-mile radius. And that on any given Sunday, maybe 5% are in church. And that’s a good Sunday, 5%. Folks, I mean, we got enough folks to go after and try to reach for the kingdom. We don’t need to be worrying about other folks.

But they’re… And John is kind of… I think if you want to think of, if you’ve ever been to a concert, there’s always a warm-up band. John’s the warm-up band for Jesus. That’s what he does. He gets there before and everything he does points to Him. That’s what it is. That’s what it’s all about. And what he says here is he talks… Look at the verse that comes right before, “He must increase and I must decrease.” He says, “So this joy of mine is complete.” Now, if He’s coming to the world with a purpose and He says, “My joy is complete,” I want to know what that joy is about.

Have you ever wondered about joy? Biblical joy is this, choosing to respond to external circumstances with inner contentment and satisfaction. And it’s knowing that God will use these experiences for His purpose. That no matter what you go through and what you’re dealing with, that God can somehow use that down the road for His honor and His glory, and also to lift you up. It’s a feeling of good pleasure and happiness that comes from the Holy Spirit and abiding in God’s presence. It’s dependent on who Jesus is rather than our own circumstances.

How many times do we go… We’re going through something and it just seems like a mountain and we focus on the mountain instead of the God who made the mountain. There’s no competition in the kingdom of heaven. Aren’t you glad that one day when we get to heaven, there’s no such thing as worship wars and all those kind of things and stuff the churches deal with? Ain’t none of that in heaven. And for one, I’m happy about that. You know, when we come in here, we’re just to give you my heart. That’s what’s important.

That’s what… I don’t know if any of you guys had ever met, heard of a guy named Matt Redmond. If you’re into contemporary music at all, and Matt’s been around for a while. In the late 1990s, he wrote a song. Now, it was based off an interesting thing in his particular church. He was an artist, he was a songwriter, but he was also a music director. And at his church, worship just didn’t seem much on Sundays. You know, how many times do we… we’ve seen that song? I mean, I look at some hymns. I could sing some hymns almost blindfolded. I don’t have to look at, you know, the words up on the screen. I’ve just… I’ve been a Baptist since I was five. So, I know hymns. And… but sometimes I find myself just singing the words, never thinking about the words. And I just kind of go through the motions. Well, that was apparently going on in his church.

And so, the pastor did kind of an interesting thing. The pastor’s name was Mike Pilavachi. See if I can get that right. And here’s what he did. And he says, “You know what? We got to get worship right.” So he did away with the PA system. He did away with the organ. He did away with the piano. He did away with the guitar and the drums. He did away with everything. In fact, they didn’t even stay in the sanctuary. They went to another building. And here’s what he said, “I just want you to come with you, and I just want you to come with the Bible.” And then he asked them this question, which I find kind of interesting. They almost didn’t have an answer for it. When you come to worship, what offering are you bringing? Now when you think offering, we think finances. He wasn’t talking about finances.

And so for a long period of time, they just sang everything a cappella. They just read from the Bible and he preached. And then over a period of time, he started putting in the instruments again and the musicians and those folks. Out of that experience, Matt Redmond went home one night and he wrote a song that many of you might know. It’s called “The Heart of Worship.” Here’s the words of the song. When the music fades and all Is stripped away, and I simply come, longing just to bring something that’s worth that will bless your heart. I’ll bring you more than a song. For a song in itself is not what you have required. You search much deeper within through the way things appear because you’re looking into my heart.

Here’s the chorus. I’m coming back to the heart of worship. It’s all about You. It’s all about You, Jesus. I’m sorry, Lord, for the things that I’ve made it when it’s all about You. It’s all about You, Jesus.

I’ll tell you something about John the Baptist. It was never about John the Baptist. It was always about Jesus. There was never any competition. It might have been with some of his guys, but it was never with John.

Second thing I want to bring to you is this, that there must be a major commitment in the kingdom of God. You know, when I think even of going back to competition, first of all, we’ve got to understand this. We don’t grow the church. When Jesus looked at Peter when He asked the disciples, “Who do the men say that I am?” And Peter came up with the incredible answer where he said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the risen God.” Remember Jesus’ response? Jesus’ response is what? On this confession, “You’ll build my church?” No. He says, “On this confession, I will build my church.”

See, I think Jesus chooses who comes into every church. I think He fits that church for your needs and what you bring and the offering that you’re about. I think that’s what it’s about. And the best publicity for any church is its own people. See, I know of some great churches that didn’t start out, but I want to tell you the best thing. I’ve seen this church grow from the people where they said, “I want you to come to my church. We’ve got some great folks here. We’ve got a young pastor. We just want you to experience that.” Again, we’re on the same side. We’re not fighting for transfer membership. As many of you know, over 40 people a day are moving into this city. That’s a lot. And we’re starting to see more of that even in this area.

Dallas Willard, who’s one of my favorite. He’s gone on to be with the Lord now. But I still, I was listening to him last night. He said this, “It’s interesting to consider that a church building can’t heal anybody. The church has been more prosperous spiritually in times when it was shut down from possessions, shut out from possessions, power, and influence.” And I’m not saying that tear the building down, but we need to remember what it is and isn’t good for. You guys make the difference. You do when you let the Lord come into your life and make all that difference.

So, number two, there must be a major commitment in the kingdom of God. What’s part of that? Number one, we all have a role to play. And we have to carry out that role until we’ve been assigned another role. Some of you may sit there, “I know I’ve been that way. Lord, I’m ready to go do this.” And the Lord’s going, “Any time for you, Al.” You may want to go do some of that, but it’s not time. This is what you need to do.

You all remember the old, there was once a bumper sticker that said, “Jesus is my co-pilot.” Remember when that came out? Do you remember that not long after that, there was a bumper sticker that came out that said these words, “If he’s your co-pilot, you’re in the wrong seat,” which makes a whole lot more sense. That’s what this is about. This is what we need to go to.

You know, with John, he had a role to play. That’s what John’s role was, to point people to Jesus. Ladies and gentlemen, can I tell you what your role is, what Al Smith’s role is, what Jeremy Simmons’ role is? Our role is to point people to Jesus. That’s why you get up. That’s why you have the jobs that you have. That’s why you’re in the neighborhood that you live in. That’s why you’re into the family that God has put you in. He didn’t just stick you there for, you know, just because He didn’t have nothing else to do that day. You have a role to play, and no matter where you are, you’re to point people to Jesus. How you live, how you react, how you treat people, how you look at folks you work with, all those things is to point people to Jesus. You have one mission, one ministry, one goal. And the thing I love about John is he never deviated from it. In fact, look at the passage. I mean, he’s not even asking. He says, “Look, everything that we have didn’t come from me. It’s not about me.” John responds in verse 27, “No one can receive anything unless it had been given to him from heaven.” Everything we got, everybody that’s listening to me, everybody that God allows me to baptize, all those kind of things. And here’s my message about repentance. He brings, he brings, because it’s not about me.

Max Lucado’s got a great story where he talks about a young kind of a guide in a museum, museum guide at a large art museum. And he says this. He says this young guy would come up and he’d bring the crowd with him, and then he’d look at a painting and he’d go, “This is a Monet.” And then he’d step back away and let them “Ooh” and “Ah” and get up close and try and figure it out and all those kind of things. And then he’d go to another one and say, “This is a Rembrandt.” And he’d do the same thing. And then as he was becoming more and more of a guide, he’d get a little closer to it. And he’d tell them a little bit more about it. And then he’d insert more of the knowledge that he’d checked up on it and all those kind of things. And he’d take a whole bunch of time just talking about the painting that they were looking at. And then he got to a place where he would just step right in front of a painting and say, “The painting behind me is the Monet. Let me tell you a little bit about it.” Until one day, the museum director kind of pulled him over. And the reason Max Lucado tells that story is because he happens to be a museum guide. And he says, “Max, it’s not about you, bud. It’s about the painting. It’s about the masterpiece. Step away. Just point to the masterpiece.” And when he understood that he had a role to play, but he wasn’t the masterpiece, he became a better guide.

John never misunderstood that. Some of his followers did. But the Bible says everything. He says, look what he says here, verse 28, “You yourselves can testify that I said, I’m not the Messiah, but I’ve been sent ahead of Him.” Then he tells something, says something that they can understand. “He who has the bride is the groom, but the groom’s friend who stands by and listens for Him rejoices greatly at the groom’s voice.” So he’s talking about a Jewish wedding. Now, I don’t know if you know much about Jewish weddings, but the friend here would be today’s, you know, best man. That’s what he would be. And the job of the best man many times is almost to conduct the wedding. I mean, basically get everything set up and ready to go. And one of his last jobs that he would have was to go get the bride. And he would bring the bride and he’d put her in a room and have her ready. And then he would stand guard so that nobody was going to mess this up. And then the Bible says here, he would wait and hear the groom’s voice. Then he knew, “I can open the door and I can bring the bride to the groom.” It was not his job to be the groom. It was not his job to, you know, to take over and be part where they’re at. No. [inaudible] was make sure that the bride was ready, that when the groom showed up, he could back away and say, “Now everything can get going.” How many times do we do that? We want to make sure everything gets going. We want to make sure that we’re trying to control everything. That was not his job was what? Get things ready and point to the groom. That’s what he says here. And he says, when he hears Jesus’ voice and he realizes that Jesus is on the scene, that he has been pointing towards, he has been talking about, he has been baptizing and repenting. It’s not a baptism of salvation. Jesus will take care about talking about that and He’ll go to the cross. But what he’s talking about here is basically everything we do, folks, is to point to Jesus. Do you realize you don’t lead anybody to Jesus? Now you can give your testimony, you can talk, all those things, but who brings people to Himself? The Lord does. He’s the one. But we can help set things up so that we can point to Him so that all He has to do is come in and watch Him work. We have a role to play, and we work off of one premise, and that premise is this: We are always what? Decreasing so that He can increase. When we get it in our lives, you want to live, and He says, “This is what makes my joyful.” Folks, how many times do you just want to do this? You just say, “Lord, You need to handle this.” Have you ever had a prayer where you go, “Lord, this is above my pay grade”? I’ve had a lot of those kind of prayers. I mean, in the ministry, I’ve had those prayers. Lord, I can’t handle this situation. You’re going to have to step in and handle this. But isn’t it awesome to know that we can do that? That we can sit there and say, “God, You take this, because I can’t carry this no more. I’m anxious. This burden’s too heavy. I’m going to make, I’m going to say something stupid. I’m going to do something stupid. You need to handle this.” And isn’t it nice to know that we can do that with the Lord? That we can step back and say, “Let me decrease and watch You increase.” You know what I find out when you give things to the Lord? That we don’t have the fallout. You don’t have all the junk that goes with it.

One of my jobs, when I was in the army, was shooting down airplanes. Not a big demand for that in the secular world. And one of the things on my site for three years in Germany was we had 10 nuclear warheads. And we never thanked the Lord. Never had to see one go off. But we got to see pictures. You ever see the big picture of the big mushroom cloud? Well, you know what that, you know, that’s the ground coming up filled with radiation and heat that’s come off that weapon. And that wind just takes that stuff everywhere. You know what I find? When we just give it to the Lord and we decrease so He can increase, you ain’t got all the junk. You just don’t have that.

And there’s lots of ways to point people to Jesus. But you got to stay on mission. One of my favorite stories is, and I think John the Baptist would like these guys. They were, you know, behind him was a trail of tracks. But beneath him was a pounding stallion. Before him was a mile of, of just miles of trail to cover and just had resolve. And that was the point. Remember the old point? Well, you don’t remember it because it’s 1860. Pony Express. Some of y’all might. But man, those guys, think about what you had to be to be a Pony Express rider. I mean, those guys are squitty-eyed, firm-jawed, raw-boned. Had one assignment: deliver the message. That’s the one assignment they had. They didn’t get much though. I mean, they had to seize every advantage: the shortest route, the fastest horse, the lightest saddle. They even would weigh their lunch boxes. And I tell you, if you weren’t tough, you didn’t get hired. They had to handle horses, the heat, could outrun robbers and outlast blizzards. And they usually went after orphans and young guys. That’s who they went after. And here’s what they got. They got $125 a month, which in 1860 was okay. That was pretty decent. They got a Colt revolver, a lightweight rifle, a red, a bright red shirt, blue trousers, eight. And they had to be able to cover eight hours, in eight hours, cover 80 miles. And they had to do it six days a week. You didn’t see, you didn’t see too many Pony Express guys riding into town and all, and saying, “Okay, can you get everybody in town so I can read the mail to them?” His job was just delivering the messages, just delivering the mail. That’s what John did.

Folks, I want to ask you this. How are you doing that? How are you appointing to Jesus with what you do? How are you about deciding, “I’m going to decrease so He can increase”? That it’s not about you, it’s about Him. And there’s a lot of ways you can do that. Let me just kind of wind things up with a story I came across. Now, I’m always liking stories on the internet. Let me look about, especially those of you that are teachers. I have a lot of memories from when I was A child. One that’s always stuck out to me, though, was when I was about 10 years old. And I was in school, and I struggled. And I didn’t struggle with English, math, or science. I struggled holding still. And I would try to listen, and focus, and process ideas, but I couldn’t help myself. And to be honest, I would sit there, and then I would just start tapping. And the students in the class would look at me, and they’d say, “Hey, stop tapping.” A lot of the time, I didn’t even realize I was doing it. And then eventually, even the teachers got after me, and they would yell at me, and they’d say, “Clint, you have to stop tapping.” It got so bad that I got sent to the principal’s office for tapping. And he said to me, “Okay, maybe when you go back to class, just try sitting on your hands.” So I did. I went back to class, and when I felt myself starting to tap, I just, I did this. I sat on my hands. And that worked for about five seconds.

One time, I was tapping in class, and my teacher, Mr. Jensen, he looked at me, and he yelled. He said, “Clint, stay after class.” And I thought to myself, “This is it. I am…” Now, I’ve always been the type of person that believes that a single moment in time can change a person’s life. And this was one of those moments for me, and I will never forget it. So I was sitting there with Mr. Jensen in an empty classroom. He walked past me, and he sat next to his desk, and he said, “Clint, come here. I want to talk to you.” And as he looked me right in the eye, he said, “Now, I need you to know something. You’re not in trouble, but I do have just one question that I have to ask you.” He said, “Have you ever thought about playing the drums?” And in that moment, Mr. Jensen, he leaned back, and he opened the top drawer of his desk, and he reached in, and he pulled out my very first pair of drumsticks. And he held them in his hands, and he looked at me, and he said, “Hey, Clint, you’re not a problem. I think you’re a drummer.” He recorded, played drums all over the world. My whole college education was paid for with drumsticks in my hand. Just because of a single moment in time, when somebody believed in me, he saw something in me that I didn’t even see within myself. From that moment, I learned that there’s a difference between being the best in the world, being the best for the world.

He sees in every one of you something that’s a little different than everybody else. It all points to the same goal. Our job, like John the Baptist, was to point people to Jesus. And ladies and gentlemen, there’s only one way to do that. At some point in your life, you’ve got to decrease, so He increases. Now, that’s a picture of salvation, okay? That’s a picture of what heaven’s going to be like one day. You know, we don’t stand before Him with all that we accumulated down here. We just bring to Him what we got. We just bring ourselves. Jesus even tells a parable about that, about the guy who stands before Him and said, “Look, I did this for you, and did this for you, and did this for you, and did this for you.” Remember His response? “Depart from me, because I never really knew you.” Are you willing to decrease so He can increase? I’m going to tell you, when He increases, it is unbelievable. But even as a Christian, your job, where He has placed you, people that surround you, places He wants to take you is to always point people to Jesus.

Let’s pray. Father, thank You. Thank You for a guy named John the Baptist. Don’t know how he ate bugs and honey and all that stuff. And he was kind of an interesting person. He is sure one of the unsung heroes of Scripture. He worked hard. He didn’t back away from hard times and hard people. One thing he always did is he always pointed people to You and never wavers from that. Maybe that’s why You made the statement, no man has ever been born of a woman better than John. What a statement. I’d like to get something just part of that. But, Lord, maybe there’s folks here, I know I’m one of those, that just have to say, sometimes I just got to decrease so that You can increase. People See how I handle things. Maybe they’ll say, “Why did you do that?” You can say, “Let me tell you why. Let me point you to somebody that can change your life and change it in such a way that you can’t ever understand. Your joy will be complete.” Help us do that, Lord. Whatever decisions we need to make this morning, help us to make it before we walk out that room, out the back doors. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.