He Must Increase

We come to the point of our service where we pray and we just ask for God’s blessing and His wisdom, His direction. This month we’ve been praying for the Janie Chapman missions offering. So we’ll continue to do that as well. A specific expression of that prayer as we’ve been praying for Rachel and Jake Borum. Jake is the pastor of Storyline Church, a new church that he and his wife are starting in the Greenville area. SBC work. So, as we give to the Janie Chapman offering, some of those funds eventually find their way through that flowchart to Jake and Rachel. If you want to give directly to Jake and Rachel and their effort to start Storyline Church, there’s information about that available, I can get all that to you guys. What we want to do though is we just want to take a few moments and pray both for the Janie Chapman offering as well specifically for Jake and Rachel. So, y’all take it away. I’ll put a bow on it here in a second.

Holy Spirit, good morning. Thank you for gathering us here this morning and being with us. I love the promises of Your Word that I get to lean on right now when I say I’m not going to ask God that You would be here with us because we already know according to Your Word that You’re here with us. But what I am going to ask for God is that Your presence among us would be felt and would be seen. I pray that You would do something over the next few moments that we would point at and say that was a move of God. That was the work of the Holy Spirit there. As You and I have worked together this week to study and prepare for this sermon, I pray, Holy Spirit, that You would do the extra work, You would get it across the finish line, that You would use this Word, this message, and You would plant it deep into the soul and the mind of somebody living or sitting here this morning that it would change how they live. It would change how they think. It would change how they act. It would change how they love. It would change somebody in some way. Please Lord, I want to thank You for my friends Jake and Rachel. Lord, who have been sensitive to Your call and they are to the best of their ability working with You to begin this new church in Greenville. God, I pray that You will bless the Borum family. I pray that You will bless Storyline Church. God, that one day when we all get to heaven, we get to meet the men and the women and the boys and the girls who came to faith and joy in Jesus Christ through that ministry. We get to lock arms with them. We get to say, “Wow, look at all of my spiritual cousins and nieces and nephews.” Lord, thank You for the work of the Janie Chapman offering and for the South Carolina Baptist Convention. God, it is with deep joy and pride and pleasure that we get to partner with other churches for the sake of missions. God, it’s incredible. I pray that You would bless and multiply those funds that are being given. Not ultimately for the Baptists of South Carolina to pat ourselves on the back, but for us to offer a pleasing offering to You, one that You would embrace and do something with, please. That’s all this is today. It’s just an offering to You. Help me to preach for You. Help me to lead for You, to pastor for You. Help all of us to be Christians for You. Brothers and sisters in this family for You, God. We are an offering to You. It’s in Your great name that we pray. Amen. Amen.

We’ll go ahead and turn to John 3:22-36 as we sit down in this next passage over the next few moments. We have been studying the Gospel of John over the last few months. We’re going to continue to walk slowly through this book. This will take us all the way through Christmas. We’ll take a bit of a break in the month of January and then we will pick it right back up and we will be in the Gospel of John through Easter. So if you are curious what Jeremy is going to be doing from the pulpit for the next few months, you just go ahead and take the ribbon that comes with your Bible and just go ahead and put it there in the Gospel of John. You’re not going to move it for a while. Okay? So, go ahead and put it there. John 3:22 through 36. I want to ask you a question. This might feel a bit abstract at first. I hope it’ll make a little more sense as I explain. I believe that we all live in a story. I heard it said recently, the story you live in is the story you live out. We all live in a story. Like everybody’s life, you might feel it this way. It’s like a it’s like a sitcom. Maybe it’s a romcom. Maybe it’s just a drama. It might just feel like a documentary sometimes, but everybody’s life is this story. Question. What’s your story? We all we all live with these stories. These are ways that we classify our lives. These are like the main themes of our lives. Somebody’s story might be I am the product of a broken home. That’s the story that I live in. And my story is all about me trying to rise up above the difficulty that I’ve been given. Your story might be I am successful at business. What I see and what I want, I go get and I work for. Your story might be, I’m a legacy resident of Charleston. I’ve always lived here, always will live here, and I like the way things are. Somebody’s story this morning might be, man, I’m just a walking failure. I just seem to make mistakes every turn, every way I go, and I can’t get out of my own way.

The story that you live in will drive your passions. It will drive your desires, your fears, and your goals. Try as you might to escape it, the story you live in is the story that you will live out. If you think that your story is that you’re a child of a broken home, then I promise you if that’s how you see yourself, you will either think that you are doomed to repeat that story through your own brokenness or you’re going to become a smothering spouse always looking to safeguard everything. Man, if you think that the story you live in is I’m successful at business, then you’re probably going to become a workaholic who doesn’t spend much time with your family. If you think that your primary story is I’m a legacy resident of this place, then your the the the tagline of your life is gotta keep it the same. Got to keep it the same. Got to keep it the same. If your primary story is, I’m a walking failure with mistakes. Then maybe that voice in your mind is, I’ll never change. I’ll never be better. I guess I just have to be like this for the rest of my life.

God’s desire is to help you see how you fit into His story, how you fit into the story He is writing in the world and how that brings fulfillment. We’re going to look at the testimony, the example this morning of a guy named John the Baptist who understood this deeply. He understood whose story He was living in and that gave Him deep freedom. Look at John 3:22-36 with me. I’m going to just kind of read it in chunks before we really give the overarching main point. After this, I should say after this refers to Jesus and Nicodemus. He has had this late night encounter with Nicodemus where He is explaining the truth of the gospel and being born again. After this, Jesus and His disciples went to the Judean countryside where He spent time with them and baptized. John, that’s John the Baptist, also was baptizing in Anon near Salem because there was plenty of water there. People were coming and being baptized since John had not yet been thrown into prison.

This passage immediately begins with two teachers, Jesus Christ and John the Baptist. Jesus has got His disciples and He’s baptizing more disciples. John has his disciples and he’s also baptizing more people. It begins with these two teachers potentially with competitive aims. Let’s continue verses 25 and 26. A dispute arises between John’s disciples and a Jew about purification. So they come to John the Baptist and they tell him, “Rabbi, the one you testified about and who was with you across the Jordan is baptizing. Everybody is going to Him.” So it starts off with these two teachers. But what we start to see is this argument bubbling up to the surface. John’s disciples come to John with this question originally about purification, but it leads really to a question about prominence. It’s not so much how can we be pure before a holy God. It is how can we outperform that other teacher? There’s this weird tension starting in the Gospel of John between Jesus and John the Baptist. And it’s over this term rabbi. If you’re into facts of the Bible, you can write this down. The word rabbi occurs only nine times in the Gospel of John. Rabbi is this official Jewish word that means teacher. It’s it’s more than just pastor or teacher. It’s more like religious social leader. Every rabbi would have their disciples. So to become a rabbi was a big deal. To be a disciple of a rabbi, it’s even bigger deal. Only nine times in the Gospel of John is the word rabbi even used. Eight of those times it’s used for Jesus. One of them it’s used for John the Baptist. So this is the only time in the whole Gospel of John where somebody other than Jesus Christ is being recognized as a spiritual leader and teacher.

You see John the Baptist he had a lot of clout. He had a lot of prominence. He had a lot of importance in that time. It would have been so easy for John as the preparer and the way maker for the Messiah to try to amass as big of a gathering for himself as possible. And the disciples of of John the Baptist weren’t so confident that Jesus was their co-aborer. They thought Jesus is his disciples may actually be their competitors. Yet John the Baptist is going to recognize that God’s mission is bigger than John’s mission.

Verses 27-36, John responds to his own disciples, mind you. No one can receive anything unless it’s been given to him from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I said I’m not the Messiah, but I’ve 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. Verse 30, that incredible example. He must increase, but I must decrease. The one who comes from heaven is above all. The one who is from the earth is earthly and speaks in earthly terms. The one who comes from heaven again is above all. He testifies to what He has seen and heard. And yet no one accepts His testimony. The one who has accepted His testimony has affirmed that God is true. For the one whom God sent speaks God’s words since He gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hands. The one who believes in the Son has what church? >> Eternal life. But the one who rejects the Son will not see life. Instead, the what church? >> The wrath of God remains on him.

This passage opens with two teachers. It flows into a big argument and it wraps up with John declaring there’s only one worth following. You see, as great as John the Baptist was, and I don’t really have space to get into that, as great as he was, John recognized this. He was second at best. John’s ministry, remember from prophesied from the book of Isaiah, John’s ministry was all about being number two. John was never called by God to be number one. He was always ordained and commissioned by God to merely make the way, to merely prepare the way for the big deal coming. John recognized he’s just the opening act. He’s just the appetizer. He was not the main course. He was not the main event. John was second at best.

And how could he say this? How could the most popular preacher in all of Israel deflect attention away from himself? How could the one that has been prophesied for hundreds of years, who’s arrived on the scene, attracting a following and rejuvenating the spiritual life of Israel? How could that guy tell his followers to go and follow Jesus instead? You remember Jesus’s first disciples? They were John’s disciples first. Philip and Andrew, the first two people that the Gospel of John has Jesus calling to follow Him, used to follow John. John says, “No, I’m not the guy.” That’s the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. How could he do this? How could this highly successful person start to erode his own success in giving away his own followers? It’s because of this. John knew that Jesus is the hero of God’s story. Let me say it again. Jesus is the hero of God’s story. And John knew that. You see these little figurines. I’m holding one of these guys up. You see them all over the place. There’s some of them all over our church building. In fact, these little Jesus figurines. You know, one of the things I like about these is if you do put it in your pocket, it does remind you to look like the one we profess our faith in. Like this little physical reminder, it does tell you, hey, as Pastor Al sometimes says, you may be the only Jesus that people ever meet. Man, Jesus died to make people look who look like Himself and carry us and throw us into the world so that we could introduce people to Jesus. Like that’s a that’s a great reminder. But I heard it recently that sometimes though the way we think about our Christianity is I’m going to put this little Jesus in my pocket. And whatever I want to do, He’s just along for the ride. So the way I see myself, I’m the big dog in my story. Jesus is second. Some of us live like that. We put a little Jesus in our pocket and we invite this little Jesus into our story. My story of success, my story of protecting what’s mine, my story of having whatever I want. John the Baptist didn’t live that way. He did not believe that there was a little Jesus in the pocket of his tunic. John recognized he was the little John in God’s story. So I’m going to ask it this way. Jesus is the hero of God’s story. Is He the hero of yours? The only reason John the Baptist is able in this moment to instead of protecting his importance, he casts the importance on Jesus. The only way he’s able to do that is because he recognizes that Jesus is the hero, not John. Is Jesus the hero of your story? If I just just take a moment and just just close your eyes and just sit there and just be honest and let the Holy Spirit speak to you. Is Jesus the hero of your story? Is He the one that has rescued you from the perilous situation you couldn’t escape from that you were powerless to get out of? Is He the one that now dominates your every decision and has full authority over your entire life? Is He the one that you revere? Is He the one that gets your ultimate loyalty? Is He the one that you cherish and you love with all of your emotions? Or is He just the guy that you call on whenever you’re uncomfortable, the guy who’s just big enough to save you from your sin, but too small to have any actual bearing on how you live your life today? Jesus is the hero of God’s story. For that to make sense though, let me share with you what is God’s story. I want to share a tool with you. This is called God’s big story or God’s true story from a ministry called Saturate. This is God’s story. You see, in the very beginning, before anything ever existed, there was a perfect, holy, beautiful God. And this God, man, He existed in this trinity and then this community of love within Himself, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And He had no lack, no need, no deficiency of any sort. Yet out of a move of love within Himself, God creates people. He created us to be in His image, which would mean that when people or that when Yeah. when people go about His creation, it would be representatives of God going anywhere. In the same way that we walk the halls of this church building and you see my kids and this the image of Jeremy and Becca Simmons, to a deeper degree, whenever anybody or anything would encounter a man or a woman, they would be seeing the image of God, a living, moving, breathing representation of God. However, the goodness of creation quickly slips into a moment of rebellion where Adam and Eve under the direction and the influence of the evil one, Satan, chose against God’s way and against His story and against His designs. and they chose to follow the lies of Satan instead of the promises and the truth of God. God gave Adam and Eve just one rule. Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Satan tempts them right there and they eat from that very same tree. So while in creation, God and man had this perfect dwelling together where man walked with God, God with man, and everything was perfect and harmonious because of the rebellion. Now that home that man and God had together has been torn and broken apart. So God meets the rebellion with an incredible promise. He says, “I am Going to send a savior who is going to deal away with that liar, the serpent, Satan. And in the meantime, I’m also going to make a family of worshippers out of y’all.” So God makes this incredible promise that we see ultimately point forward to the life of Jesus Christ.

You see, Jesus Christ did not just come to make us better people. He did not come to live a morally exemplary life. Jesus came to restore and to redeem us from our sin. You see, every person who’s ever been born, Billy Graham to your grandmother, to me, to Pastor Al to the newborn kids of our nursery, which by the way, I’ll make this a quick promo. We’ve got a lot of kids in the in the kids wing these days by God’s grace. Like, we’ve been praying for that for years. And God’s been so kind. He has made been abundant to bless us with children. Kim needs more of our loving faces and more of our loving hands and hearts to go and bless them with our attention. She’s just looking for it once a month. All right. So, we are looking for more people to serve in the kids wing. Commercial over.

Jesus comes on the scene to redeem us from a problem that we can’t solve on our own. He has come to rescue us from the burning building that we could never escape from. You see, when Adam and Eve rebelled under the influence of Satan, they invited a problem into this world called sin. And sin has deeply infected and affected every single thing and every single person ever since. Sin is this disease of our souls that eats away at us, deforming us and breaking us. But it also creates this legal issue between us and God where we now deserve God’s consequences. That’s a situation that we cannot get ourselves out of. So Jesus comes and he fully satisfies the demands of a holy and a righteous God. And he dies for us on the cross on the cross where God’s wrath for your sin and my sin was poured on him in totality. So that God or Jesus on the cross will be able to say it is finished. Not I am finished but it is finished. The wrath of God it is finished. The consequences for people’s sin it is finished. On the cross Jesus redeems us and he really dies. But after three days, he really comes back to life and he secures eternal life for us. So that anybody who had placed their faith in him would be able to live with God forever starting now.

After Jesus ascends from the earth and he goes back to heaven, he inaugurates the church which would continue to carry this mission forward. not to build buildings or create denominational institutions as great as they are, but he gives us a task of returning to our original design as the imagebearers of God to spread God’s image all over the world. Yet, this mission and this task now deals with helping more and more people become disciples and followers of Jesus Christ. So, we’ve been given a mission. You know, as a church, we don’t have to create our own mission statement. Jesus has already given it to us. Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have taught you. And behold, I am with you always to the ends of the age. Jesus has entrusted this mission to the church until a day that we know is coming where God will fully restore his home between him and us in the new heavens and the new earth.

That is God’s big story. And guess what? I’m not the hero. Billy Graham’s not the hero. St. Augustine not the hero. John the Baptist not the hero. Jesus is the hero of God’s story. Is he the hero of your story? You see on the sermon response guide listening guide there’s five reasons that Jesus is the hero. I really just want to focus on reasons number four and number five. The fourth reason that Jesus is the hero according to John the Baptist in verse 36. In fact, I’ll just read verse 36 again. Look at it in your Bibles. This is John 3:36. The one who believes in the Son has eternal life. But the one who rejects the Son won’t see life. Instead, the wrath of God remains on him. You see, Jesus is the hero because he gives life. He gives life. Nothing else in this world can give life. Everything else in this world, Life is a man; it is just a commodity that we consume and we eat up. Nothing can give you life except for the way and the truth and the life, Jesus Christ, who gives us eternal life through what He has done. And in giving us life, He also saves us from wrath. The just consequence of a holy God on my sin is wrath, condemnation, punishment. Yet Jesus absorbs all of that for us on the cross. Man, that’s what Jesus does for us. He gives us life when we are dying. He gives us freedom when we deserve to be condemned. Jesus is the hero of God’s story. Is He the hero of yours?

That might still feel a little abstract. So, I want to help you boil this down. We discover who or what our hero is when we honestly ask what’s missing from our life. You discover who your hero is when you honestly ask what’s missing. What’s wrong? What do I need? And whatever you run to, that’s your hero.

Man, some of us feel this gaping wound or this gaping hole of romantic fulfillment. That’s what’s missing. So, we make heroes of our spouses or illicit friendships because they are the people that can provide what we think we most deeply need. Others of us, may we sense that we need peace of mind. We’re so anxious. We’re so riddled with difficulty. So we make heroes out of drugs and experiences and comfort and escapism. Are you tracking with me?

Some of us feel like we so deeply need attention and approval. So our hero becomes our accomplishments, our successes, even our victimhood where we walk around just trying to draw as much attention to ourselves as possible. Man, some of us the hero is money or work or promotions because we think that if we had more treasures or more money in the bank account, then everything would be okay.

Whatever you think you need to be rescued from will tell you what your hero actually is. So when you wake up tomorrow morning, it’s going to be a beautiful day. Sun’s going to be shining, a little bit of a crisp in the air, but eventually something’s going to get to you and you’re going to be like, “Man, if only blank. If only I could be done seeing the doctors for my body. If only I could have a little more financial margin, man. If only my kids would respect and obey me. If only my kids would call me. If only my dad would call me.” Whatever you put in that blank, you will be tempted to make the hero of your life. I’m here to tell you that that thing, that person isn’t the hero. Second at best. Jesus is the hero.

Man, what you ultimately need isn’t romantic fulfillment. It’s not attention or approval from people. It’s not treasure. Just it’s not even physical health. That’s not what you ultimately need, because it’s not what you’ve ultimately been made for. What you’ve been made for is to live in God’s big story. And the hero of that story is who? Who is the hero? Let’s just say it one more time like people that believe it. Who is the hero of God’s story?

So, I want to try something with you. This is called a breath prayer. You breathe in, you breathe out. That’s just breathing. Now, let’s do something a little more spiritual with it. When you breathe in, I want you to say to yourself, “I’m not the hero.” Do it with me. Thank you. You breathe out and you say [sighs] one more time. Miss Mary Lou, do you mind playing for me?

Some of us we want to make ourselves the hero. But others of us the hero is money, relationships, success, health, drugs, moralism, good grades. So, as the music is playing, what I want you to do is you take out the word I’m put in the blank, what is your hero? Good grades. Jesus is the hero. A happy family is not the hero. Jesus is the hero. Money is not the hero. Jesus is. I want you to take a few moments just you and the Lord and you confess to God what you make to be the hero and you just breathe that out of your system. Take a few moments. Approval is not the hero. Jesus. Take a few more moments and keep doing this. Whatever it is that tempts you to become the hero of your life, tell that thing, tell yourself, breathe it out of your system. It is not the hero. Church, you’ll find yourself this week just yearning and wishing and praying.

and pleading for something. The financial margin, the physical health, the success with something at work, the peace with a family member or a friend, the warm embrace of a spouse or of a child. Man, those things can be so good, but they’re not the hero. It’s not the hero. Man, I got to look at myself as a pastor every day and say, Jeremy, preaching good sermons isn’t the hero. Jesus is. Church growth isn’t the hero. Jesus is. Success in my job, whatever you quantify that to be, that’s not the hero, man. Jesus is because Jesus came to fulfill this great story that God has and He’s inviting you into it.

Man, God did not send His one and only Son to become the sidekick of your missions. He sent Jesus to rescue you because you and me were all the damsel in distress that could not rescue ourselves. And Jesus in His kindness and His bigness invites us to participate in His mission as the church. So I don’t have to be the hero. My wife doesn’t have to be the hero. My kid’s obedience doesn’t have to be the hero. My physical health doesn’t have to be the hero. Jesus already is.

Some of us in the room have never actually stepped into that, though. While we may profess some sort of faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we still want to make us or something else the hero of our lives. And this morning, God is saying, “Let Me be the hero.”

I’m gonna invite Michael and Lindsay to come back up as we sing our final song, “Have Thine Own Way, Lord.” This ultimate declaration that we’re not the hero. God is. Jesus is.

God, You have made Your face to shine on us. You look at us and You call us Yours. Jesus, You have come. You are the hero of God’s story. Help us to live in that reality. Jesus, please be the hero of my story this week. I love You. Thank You for loving us. Amen.