The Comparison

We’re going to pray for your one. And, you know, that somehow God would use you or use somebody or somehow just make Himself real in that person’s life to bring him closer or actually to Him. So I want you to just bow your head. Get in little groups like we normally do. But I want you to pray for that one again. It never gets old. And pray for the things that Caroline mentioned that are coming up. God’s using this church in some amazing ways, especially as now we come out of the summertime and we start to hit school time and all those things. Pray for our kids as they go back this week and the teachers. So let’s just go to the Lord in prayer at this time.

Father, it is so good, so good to hear folks talking to You. Well, I enjoy talking to You. Maybe we also need to do maybe a little bit more because we always know You’re there and You’re always listening. It never gets old to You. You can handle it all when we can’t. So thank You for just being God who not just bowed on the cross for us but sustains our life and gives us a reason to make a difference in this world and point people to You. Lord, we prayed about our ones. Lord, make Yourself real. Do things that we can’t do. Get their attention. Bring them to You. Give them a true reason to live and exist that goes far beyond the time here on earth. Thank You, Father. Now, bless our time together. Bless as we open Your Word. As Lord, help us to be different when we leave and that the world will notice that difference. We ask this in the name that’s above every name. The awesome name of Jesus. And all God’s people said.

Okay, we’re back in John 1. We’re going to be starting with verse 19 this morning. Last week, we kind of talked about how John kind of starts this gospel. His is different than the other three. They’re more about, I think, the facts of the gospel. That’s the life of Jesus. But John not just wants to give you the facts. He wants to give you the meaning behind the facts. He wants you to understand the whole basics of why Jesus even came. And he starts out. He wants you to know one thing more and above everything else. He wants you to know who Jesus is, that He’s God.

You know, when I was studying this, I kind of came back to the word memra. And basically, what memra means is it’s a word for God. It’s what the Hebrews would use. Much like they would use Adonai, Elohim, El Shaddai. Words because they didn’t want to say the proper name of God. They had so much respect for Him. And one of them they would use would be memra, which is nothing more than in the Greek. It’s the word logos or the word. So John right off the bat tells you, even, you know, he wanted to let the Jewish folks know too, this is God. Jesus was God. And He was God in the beginning. He was God as a baby. He was God as a child. He was God as a man. And He came for a purpose.

And so when we read our words of that, he talks about another John. A John who was the cousin of Jesus, John the Baptist or John the Baptizer. And he talks about why he came into the world and why that was important. And why that was even like Jesus coming in with His prophecies. It was prophesied that John would come in in the spirit of Elijah. And so if you’ll just kind of follow with me, I’ll read a little bit of it. And we’ll just kind of go from there. Verse 19 of John chapter 1. This was John’s testimony. When the Jews from Jerusalem, they sent priests and Levites to ask him, who are you? He didn’t deny it. But he confessed, I am not the Messiah. Well, what then? And they asked him, are you Elijah? I’m not. Are you the prophet? No, he answered. Well, who are you then? They asked. And he needed to give an answer to those who sent us. What can you tell us about yourself? And he said this. I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness. Make straight the way of the Lord. Just as Isaiah the prophet had said.

We’ll stop there for right now. As I start to read this, God just put on my heart, number one, that there’s An instant comparison between who John is and who the one he’s talking about is, which is Jesus. And so I came up with this. Well, who are they? Well, John makes it real clear who he’s not. I’m not the Messiah. Now, they were looking for the Messiah. They were hoping the Messiah was coming. They had a whole idea of what the Messiah was going to be and who He was going to be about and what He was going to say and what He was going to do. And John comes to say, I think you’re looking for a different guy than that. But I’m not that guy.

John is making, it’s interesting, John has become such a spectacle, almost a circus acting among himself, that they were sending people to say, okay, go out and find who this guy is. Ask him who he is. Is he the one we’ve been waiting for? And so they go out and they do that. And he tells them, I’m not the one you’re waiting for. But I’m going to talk to you about the one that’s coming who you’re waiting for. I’m not the Messiah. I’m not the prophet. I’m not, as it says at the end of the book of Malachi. I’m not Elijah. But he comes in the spirit of Elijah.

You got to think of John the Baptist as kind of like the last of the Old Testament prophets. He’s that guy that goes out and just tells it like it is. You want a guy to tell you the truth? Go see John. John, he’ll do that. But he’s not the prophet. He’s not, you know, the Messiah. He’s not Elijah. He’s not any of that. But who is he? He’s the one who points to and announces Jesus. Listen to what he says. I am a voice of one crying in the wilderness. Make straight the way of the Lord.

Now, what in the world does that mean? Well, if you know anything about kind of biblical times, when kings would kind of come from one area to another, they actually would straighten out roads so his trip would be a whole lot easier. If there were hills, they kind of would take them around or move them. But they tried to make it as straight line shot as possible. And that’s kind of what they did for kings. And he’s sitting there and Isaiah is saying, here comes the guy who’s going to do the same thing. He’s going to make straight, make easy that when Jesus comes, you’re going to know exactly who He is. And that’s what He does. And he talks about that.

Verse 24. Now, they had been sent from the Pharisees. So they asked him, why then do you baptize if you aren’t the Messiah or Elijah or the prophet? He said, well, I baptize with water. And John answered them, someone stands among you, but you don’t know Him. He’s the one coming after me whose sandal strap I’m not worthy to untie. And all this happened in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing. In fact, if you go back to the earlier in the chapter in verse 14, the Bible says, So we know that John isn’t this guy. John hadn’t been around forever, but he talks of one who is. Who is Jesus?

So we’ve got John here. He’s not the Messiah. He’s not the prophet. But the Bible says he points to and announces Jesus. So who’s Jesus? He is the Messiah. He is God. And He claims to be God. If anybody ever tells you that Jesus never claimed to be God, He was just a good man, just come and say, let’s go to the scriptures. Jesus even used the personal name of God, Yahweh. Now, a Jew would never do that. He would never even mention the name Yahweh. That’s why he would say, things like Memrah, the word, or Elohim, or Adonai, El Shaddai. They had all kind of names of all the things that God was, but they would never use His personal name. Jesus does that in this book.

When He says things like, I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the good shepherd. I am the water. I am the gate. I am the door. When Jesus is using that word, I am, in that passage, and basically, this is what He is saying. I am that I am the good shepherd. I am that I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am that I am. And that’s why the Pharisees and the Sadducees and all the scribes went ballistic, because what is He doing? He is claiming equality with God the Father. And John the Apostle wants you to know that. And John the Baptizer wants you to know that. He is the Messiah. He is God. He has always existed, and now is flesh on earth. How much God loves us.

So, who they are. We know that John’s not the Messiah. He points to it. We know that Jesus is the Messiah and has always existed, as I just read. So, why are they here? Why does Jesus need someone to come before you? Why don’t you just show up? Why is John even here? Because John is preparing them to meet Jesus.

Now, how does he do that? Well, they asked him. And it’s interesting, because you need to understand something about baptism in Old Testament times. Baptism was kind of a regular thing. If you had sinned and needed to be cleansed, they would baptize you. The word baptizo, especially in the Old Testament, was a word that meant immerse. Okay? And the picture they wanted you to have is like, if you were dying a cloth, you took that cloth and you put it in dye to make it a different color. You would dip the whole, you didn’t dip part of the cloth in there, you dipped the whole thing in there. And so, if you wanted a purple cloth, which kind of symbolized royalty or whatever, you would dip the whole thing in there so that it would come out different. And it would all be cleansed, or it would all be.

Many times, they would even take cloth to prepare it to be dyed and put it in kind of a, almost a, you know, Clorox kind of solution, a cleaning solution to make it white. And then they would dye it. But the picture is this, that when you come out, you’re different. It’s kind of like next week, we’re going to have the privilege of baptizing some folks up here. And the whole picture we’re going to talk about is that when you go down, you’re representing that you’re dying to that old way of life. You’re representing the death and burial of Jesus. But when you come up, what you’re representing is that you’re a new person. You’re now cleansed. You’re different.

And what John did, he baptized, the Bible says, with water. And what it would do, it would lead to repentance and get ready for Christ. In fact, he said he baptized a baptism of repentance. Now, what does repentance mean? Because you can’t be saved without it. Repentance means that you not only turn in another direction from the life that you’re living, but you think different now. It’s a changing of your mind.

The reason you want to repent is because, you know, in the military, I’ve often used this and I’ve shared it with people. You know, we had a thing called, you know, about face. And all you do is you would, you would, you would be pointing in this direction. And when you were done with about face, you’re now pointing in this direction. The problem is you ain’t moved anywhere. To the rear march means you’re looking in this direction, but then you pivot and you start marching in this direction. The difference is you’re moving out of that. You’re different. You think different. You’re going somewhere different. That’s what repentance is.

And what John wanted to do to all the folks that came out to hear him, much like the Old Testament prophets, was he wanted to talk to you about marching in a different direction. Repenting of your sins, saying, I don’t want to go there no more. I don’t want to do that anymore. I don’t want to think that anymore. I don’t want to talk like that anymore. I want to go in this direction. The problem is you’re making those decisions. Now it gets you ready for Jesus, but Jesus hadn’t done anything in your heart, right?

John was always about pointing to Jesus. I’m reading a neat book called Saturdays with Billy. Jeremy got it for me. Don Wilton was the pastor of First Baptist Spartanburg for almost 40 years. He is one of probably the closest people to Billy Graham that Billy may have ever had. Every Saturday, if Billy was at his home in Montreat, North Carolina, which is a little over an hour drive from Spartanburg, he would go up and spend time with Billy Graham. How would you like to spend Saturdays with Billy? That even sounds neat. And Billy was always gracious. Billy became a member of his church, became a member of First Baptist Spartanburg, but Billy never, ever showed up. He never went to church there. You know why? What do you think would happen if Billy Graham came and sat right there? What would be kind of the topic of conversation or where everybody’s eyes would be that morning? It’d be on Billy. And Billy never wanted that. Billy’s whole idea was, I want everybody’s eyes to be on Jesus. I want everybody’s ears to be hearing about Jesus. I want everybody’s mind to be thinking about Jesus. And so he never wanted to be a distraction.

And the whole point of John here, he said, I’m not the Messiah. I’m not this prophet. I’m not Elijah, but I’m going to point you and get you ready for the one who is. And so it starts with repentance, but it doesn’t end with repentance. John baptized with water that was to lead to repentance, get them ready for Christ. And it was the point to their sin. See, John wanted them to get to look and say, yeah, I need to get right and get them ready. Which brings us to Jesus. Look at verse 29. The next day, John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, here’s the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

John never claimed to take away anybody’s sin. This is the one I told you about. After me, after me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because He existed before me. I didn’t know Him, but I came baptizing with water so He might be revealed to Israel. And John testified, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove and He rested on Him. I didn’t know Him, but He who sent me to baptize with water told me the one you see the Spirit descending on and resting on. He is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God.

John could have done a lot of things. I’m kind of thinking if someone had come up to me and said, are you the Messiah? You might have nobody know him, close to him, trying to be somebody I’m not. I had the privilege this week of playing. I haven’t been on a golf retreat in 40 years. And so I got invited by Clarence to go on a golf retreat with him. And Clarence would tell me, now these guys are, they’re, they’re kind of, they’re kind of special. And they were great bunch of guys. You know, they had ex Marines, you had ex army guys, ex Navy guys. We had a doctor, we had a college professor, coaches. There was, there was 13 of us. Two of them are preachers. So you can imagine how that went, you know, one day, a couple of them got paired up with me and Clarence on the same team. So they got two preachers and, and, and they would, they would kid each other. They’d go, they do things like, well, you didn’t, y’all clean up your act, hanging around two preachers.

But I’ll tell you what, the, the neat thing is, is, is that they didn’t know me from Adam. They got to know me, but that, but Clarence has been playing golf and going on trips like this with these guys for a long time. But the respect they had for him as a, as a, as a pastor was, was neat to watch. Clarence is kind of quiet anyway, but, but these guys had stories, lots of stories. In fact, I heard this, this one, this one term, never let truth get in the way of a good story. And, and it didn’t, it didn’t to a lot of these guys. I mean, they, they couldn’t, it’s kind of like, you know, you get golfers and, and fishermen together. I mean, you can imagine the stories, you know, the fish is about this big, but, but they’re telling it, it’s, while they’re telling it, it’s getting like this. Well, that’s kind of like, you know, the putts we made, you know, The putt might have been this long, but all of a sudden, next thing you know, it’s a 10-footer or a 20-footer. 30 footer or longer are the shots we made.

John wasn’t about that. John knew who he was. John felt it was a privilege to point to Jesus. To John, it was a privilege to talk about Jesus. To John, it was his calling. It was what God had assigned Him to do. In fact, it’s interesting that he talks about that whoever called him in the ministry told him that one day he would be able to do this, that one would come. John was not about John. He was about Jesus. And I wonder sometimes is if we live our lives as if it’s more about us than it is about Jesus. I mean, it’s more what I want. It’s more about how I see it. It’s more about where I want to go. Things I want to do with, you know, what I want to do with my life, my decisions. And my thing is this. If it’s always about you, how’s that working out for you? I mean, what do you do with your own sin? How do you handle that? If you’re making your own decisions, how do you handle your own sin? How do you handle when you can’t even kind of agree with yourself?

John was always pointing to Jesus. Not only that, but he was just, he was baptizing into repentance and trying to get right before Jesus got there. Jesus baptized with the Holy Spirit, the Bible says. That’s the difference. The difference between John’s baptism and Jesus’ baptism, one baptized with water and with a baptism of repentance. Jesus was baptizing with the Holy Spirit. What does that do? That means Jesus is coming inside of you. I mean, the Holy Spirit’s coming into you. And at the point of conversion, He changes you. He makes you not only want something different, He makes you something different. He looks at you and He says, this is where you need to go. This is what’s important in your life now. And everything that the Holy Spirit does in your life, one of the big things He does, He convicts you of sin. Absolutely. He points you in, but what the Holy Spirit wants you to do is He always points to Jesus. Do what He does. Follow Him. This is what it’s all about. It brings the entire Trinity in our lives. And where do we see that? With what happened? He said, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove and He rested on Him. Go to the book of Mark, it says, and the Father spoke. And what did He say? This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.

At the very point of Jesus being baptized, demonstrating what happens when we get baptized. See, when we get baptized, we get the Holy Spirit, we get Jesus, and we get the Father. The Trinity is all part of this deal. I mean, who doesn’t want to go through life with that? And yet, here’s what we do. We’ll say, well, I want Jesus when I want Jesus. I’ll kind of put Jesus in this room in my home. And when I need Him, I’ll open the door and I’ll go to Him, I’ll pray to Him and hope that He’ll be my, you know, my spiritual Santa Claus. And when I need something, I hope He delivers. Heaven be if He doesn’t deliver the way I want. No, He just takes over everything.

Do you realize that when the Holy Spirit comes into your life and changes you, your life changes? Your desires changes. Your dreams changes. Your future changes. Your now changes. How you look at people. Hopefully, your thinking changes. Your vocabulary changes. All those. I’m interested. When we’re on this golf trip, you know, it’s amazing to me how folks and, you know, things that they’ll say or talk or whatever doesn’t change. Now, these are good guys. And usually when they were around me and Clarence, things changed, didn’t they, Clarence? But God doesn’t want your language and your thoughts and what you do and how you work to change when you’re around Jesus or a bunch of preachers. He wants it to be different no matter who you’re around.

One thing about John the Baptist, there was no doubt who he was and what he was about. He didn’t care if you were the king. And most of the Old Testament prophets were the same way. They didn’t care if you were the king or just a nobody, some poor folks that didn’t have a home. He was going to be the same to you. And he was going to point you to the same place.

You know, that kind of reminds me of a story years ago about a guy named Jim Voss. You would never probably have no idea who Jim Voss is. But in the 1950s, the mob knew who he was. Jim Voss, at one time, had actually worked for the FBI. He was an electronics guy. He was great at wiretapping. And one time he wiretapped a guy by the name of Mickey Cohen’s house. If you didn’t have anything I do, Mickey Cohen was like the mobster who ran L.A. He worked for Al Capone. He worked for Bugsy Siegel in Las Vegas. And when Siegel died, Cohen kind of gets L.A. and Las Vegas. And so what he does when he finds out his house is bugged, he finds out who does it, Jim Voss. And he says, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to bug the police and the FBI. I want to know what they’re doing. So he really got paid by the mob.

Jim Voss went to the L.A. Crusade with Billy Graham. And he got saved. When he got saved, he got saved. He knew Mickey Cohen. He wanted Mickey Cohen to get saved. And so somehow he arranges for Mickey Cohen to meet Billy Graham. And Billy talks to him, explains the gospel, just lays it out there. And Jim Voss is pointing to Jesus. But he’s pointing to Billy Graham, who is talking about Jesus. And apparently Mickey Cohen makes a profession of faith. It hit the newspapers. Gangster converts to Jesus. And Mickey Cohen was looking to be seen with Billy Graham. And all some pictures started popping up on the newspapers, front pages, different things.

But Jim Voss noticed something different. About Mickey Cohen. Here’s what he noticed about him. He wasn’t acting like a Christian. He wasn’t changing how he talked and what he did. He was still being who he was. And one day Jim Voss went to Mickey’s house and said, Mickey, you prayed to receive Jesus. You wanted Jesus to come into your life. You can’t be doing and saying and acting like the way you’re acting. You need to be different.

Here’s what Mickey said to him. Jim, do you think there are Christian doctors out there? He said, yeah. Do you think there’s Christian plumbers out there? You think there’s Christian construction guys out there? Christian lawyers? He said, yeah. Well, why can’t there be Christian gangsters? And he was serious. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s how we live our lives sometimes. Why do I have to change? John was bringing in through repentance and not only acknowledge your sin and want to change, but allow.

Here’s the difference between a baptism of repentance and a baptism of the Holy Spirit. When you get baptized by the Holy Spirit, Jesus comes in and changes you. Here’s what we don’t see. We want eternity. We want heaven forever. We want a little bit of heaven now. We want all the things to go with it. But do we really want to change?

See, three baptisms. Well, really, two baptisms are mentioned here, but we’ve got one in our lives. There’s the baptism of repentance. The definition for that is that it brings you to want to change from sin. It gets you ready for Christ. But you really don’t need that anymore. We needed it with John because John was pointing to Jesus who was coming physically on earth. We need repentance. You can’t have salvation without repentance. But you don’t need a baptism for it. You don’t need to be cleansed.

See, the deal back in those days was that if I was going to be a follower of John the Baptist, then I would be baptized into repentance with John. And John would sit there and say, if you’re going to follow me, you need to be baptized. And anybody that was being followed would be baptized. So all of John’s followers had been baptized in his name, in John’s name. You know, that changes in Acts 19, where Paul encounters a bunch of Ephesians, and they’re going, well, who are you baptized with? Are you baptized with John or are you baptized with John? And Paul goes, no, no, no, no. That’s not how that works. It’s all about Jesus now. And those who have been baptized in John in Acts 19, 1 through 7, are now re-baptized into Jesus because everything changed with Jesus and everything changed with the cross.

So we don’t need baptism, but we need baptism of the Holy Spirit. It’s the point where you’re saved. You get baptized by the Holy Spirit. It happens. He comes in. He quickens your heart and your mind. It’s something that it’s powerful. It changes who you are. The Bible says we, you know, we’re born again that we become like little Eden. She physically is now born. But when you get saved, you start out as a little spiritual baby, but then you start to grow.

I can remember when I was in seminary, I’ll never forget. The church I went to was having a big revival. And they brought in this guy and he just, he gave the longest invitations of anybody I ever know. I mean, you know, nobody be coming down. It was like He wasn’t going to leave until somebody was going to come down. And I’m in the balcony going, “I’ll come down if we can kind of close this meeting.” But during that revival, I watched deacons get saved. And I watched some of my seminary friends get saved. And I’m thinking, “I thought you guys are taking care of that before you got here.” And so it made me wonder at 10 years old, was I really saved? And it was summertime. And I remember that summer, I took a course in seminary and we spent about a week on childhood baptisms. And here’s what the Lord told me. Now I’m not saying, but this is what He told me: “Al, you were 10 years old. You didn’t know all the deep theology. You could struggle on how to present the gospel, but you know what? You gave your heart to Me.” And at 10 years old, we started a process. Now if no process has ever started in your life and you’re not growing like you need to be and all the, but God started a process and He started to grow me. Just like He’s going to grow little Eden and little Luke and little Annie, little honor. Just like He grew us. He’s going to grow us spiritually. If you’re not more of a Christian today than you were a week ago, something’s wrong. If you’re not more of a Christian, especially now than you were a year ago, something’s wrong. God starts that process. The Holy Spirit starts that process and you’re chained for eternity.

So how do we show that? Well, we got this thing now that we call believer’s baptism. You know why believer’s baptism is important? Because it’s the one thing that Jesus said that we’re supposed to do. If you’re a Christian and you’ve never been baptized, you’re in disobedience. I want you to understand that. One of the first things you should do as a Christian is tell everybody, let me tell you, I’m going to demonstrate physically and publicly what Jesus means to me. I am not ashamed of Him. I am not ashamed of His gospel. And I want everybody to know who Jesus is in my life. That’s why you get baptized. That’s why we have believer’s baptism. And believer’s baptism always happens after you get saved. Doesn’t happen as a baby. In fact, there’s no place in the New Testament where it talks about infant baptism. It’s not in the Bible. It’s not in the New Testament. Infant baptism is not in the New Testament. We have taken some liberties with some passages, but it’s not in here. Now, if you want to have a dedication, call it a dedication. A dedication is more for the parents than it is for the baby anyway. It says that’s how we’re going to raise this youngster. But believer’s baptism is important because Jesus gave us two ordinances. He gave us the Lord’s Supper to remember His death, but He also gave us baptism so that we would remember the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus and what it does in our life. And our death to sin and our rising out of sin and ours becoming a new person in Jesus. That is what baptism shows. And we need to get baptized if we haven’t been.

So let me ask you a question. When were you saved? Have you been baptized since you were saved? Let me give you some other questions. There’s questions that come out of this. Was Jesus already divine when He was baptized? And the answer is yes. John 1 says the Word became flesh, the incarnation. The word Emmanuel means God with us. He was as divine as a baby and as a child as He was when He was an adult. Well, when did Jesus start His ministry? Well, He really starts it at this point. He’s just as divine, but He starts His ministry right after He’s baptized, which is when you can really start your ministry. And I’ve already talked about, you know, were those baptized by John, did they get re-baptized after believing in Jesus? Yes. You know what you’re doing. It changes your life. So again, baptism comes after you’re a believer. So were you a believer when you got baptized? That’s a yes or no. Bible, have you been baptized? Are you willing to be just outward with Jesus? I want people to know where He stands in my life. John wanted to make that clear. Jesus is definitely making it clear. You want to be a follower of the Jesus that John talked about. At the very least, do you and Me, we live our lives. Do we point to Jesus? Do we point to Jesus by what we say? Do we point to Jesus by what we think? Do we point to Jesus by what we allow our eyes to look at? Do we point to Jesus by how we work and talk? Let me tell you, the early Christians were very clear about who they followed. Their work ethic was different. How they talked to people and loved people was different. How they did what Jesus did. How they loved their enemies. How they took people nobody would take care of. How they just, they did think that people would go, “How can you do that? Why can you do that? Why are you so radical in your love?” And the reason was they said, “Well, I’m not that way. I wouldn’t have done that with you, but I can do that because of Jesus.”

And that’s kind of where we’re at. That’s where we’re at today. And that’s a question only you can answer. I can ask it. You got to answer it. The neat thing is when that truth hits your life, you ain’t got to make up stories because the great stories will start to happen in your life.

Father, I thank You for a guy named John the Baptizer. I thank You for his boldness. I thank You for what he wanted us to do and who he pointed to. More important, I thank You for Jesus, the one he pointed to. See, without Jesus, I don’t get saved. Without Jesus, I don’t get to go to heaven. Without Jesus, I can’t live a life that makes a difference, that has eternal ramifications. Without Jesus, I just got me. I don’t want to just have me. Lord, help us to realize, number one, have I shown publicly how much You mean to me? First of all, before I can be, go through believer’s baptism, I got to be a believer. Am I that? Have I given Christ my life, my future, my desires, my dreams, all that? He owns it all anyway. He’s just given us us to manage. Have I given Him things I think are mine? I trust Jesus that much. Help us make the decision that we need to make this morning. In Your Son’s precious name.