Joyful, Joyful - [John 3:22-30]

Let me ask you a question, do you like change? Not if you're a good

Baptist, you don't like change. When I, every time in my career in law enforcement, when

I would leave one place and go to another, I did so with apprehension. I was glad to leave my former place, like when

I left the jail to go to patrol, I was happy to go to patrol. When I left patrol to go to court services,

I was happy to go to court services. When I left court services, I was very happy because I no longer had a 63 mile one -way drive.

But every single time there was a little apprehension, I was a little bit worried. Things were going to be different, was

I going to like it? And in general, if we think about it, transitions are often difficult.

We just had an inauguration and there wasn't much change there, but just imagine for a moment, what might it have been like, how shocked would everyone have been if the former president who just watched the new president being sworn in got up and said, you know, before he gets up,

I want to sing his praises for a little while. After that difficult campaign, I just want to sing the praises of this man.

That would be very unusual. We might even be shocked. We don't handle transitions, we don't handle being replaced very well.

I mean, imagine, you know, the manager of the Red Sox gets fired and he's the guy who gets up at the news conference and says, here's the new manager and he's a great guy.

Let me tell you why he's so much better than me. When was the last time that happened?

Patriots fired Belichick and he gets up and says, hey, this guy's a way better coach than me, let me tell you about him.

It's not going to happen. There's a certain amount of pride that comes with position and we don't like to give that up.

Well, I think this morning we're going to see a transition handled better than any of us can handle it.

I would invite you to open your Bibles to John chapter 3. John chapter 3, we're going to be looking this morning at verses 22 to 30.

We're going to see someone step aside and put the spotlight on their successor. And really it's kind of, from our way of thinking, it's pretty unnatural and we're going to see some people react to it exactly that way.

But it shows a humility and a strength of character to be able to do exactly what needs to be done.

We're going to see somebody step aside and we're going to see him do it with great joy. Now just to review and to bring us up to where we are in the book of John, this gospel of John, good news, which he wrote, why?

So that we could know that Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah, the Christ, and believing in him, we could have eternal life.

In John chapter 1, the eternal nature of Christ was explained and his descending into the world to live within his creation as 100 % man and 100 %

God was given to us, was presented. And chapter 1 ends with Jesus gathering his first disciples.

In chapter 2, Jesus performed his first sign, the changing of water into wine at the wedding in Cana and then he went in and cleansed the temple and he performed other unrecorded signs that according, or that caused some, including

Nicodemus, to understand that he was sent from God even if they didn't know exactly who he was.

And that's why Nicodemus in the beginning of chapter 3 comes to Jesus at night. He's convinced that there's something of God about Jesus but he doesn't quite know what it is and Nicodemus is a teacher of teachers, he ought to know these things and Jesus basically tells him that and he wants to understand it.

He wants to understand who Jesus is. So the last time I preached we looked at verses 17 and 21, the end of this pericope, which

I just wanted to say, by the way, pericope, it's a fun, the section, the interview between Jesus and Nicodemus, we looked at that and we saw that the world needs salvation, salvation requires faith, salvation is uniquely available in Christ alone and the effects of salvation are evident, they can be seen.

Pericope, again, just a section, I just wanted to say it. So let's look at this pericope,

John chapter 3 verses 22 to 30, after this, after this interlude with Nicodemus, Jesus and his disciples went into the

Judean countryside and he remained there with them and was baptizing. John was also baptizing at Anon near Salim because water was plentiful there and people were coming and being baptized for John had not yet been put in prison.

Now discussion arose between some of John's disciples and a Jew over purification and they came to John and said to him,

Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan to whom you bore witness, look, he is baptizing and all are going to him.

John answered, a person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven.

You yourselves bear me witness that I said, I'm not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.

The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom who stands and hears him rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice.

Therefore, this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.

Now this morning, I first want to set up the situation, bring us right into where we are, kind of describe that, then present the problem, the difficulty that arises, and then we will see the two joyful responses of John the

Baptist to this problem. I hope that you will have both a better grasp of what

John the Baptist was all about and how remarkably unnatural his response is to this thorny situation.

Now am I going to dare you to be John the Baptist? Dare to be

John the Baptist? No. But Jesus himself said of John the

Baptist that no one was greater than him. Of all the mere mortals to be, ever be born,

John the Baptist was the pinnacle. This evening, this evening we're going to see another reason why

I said it, but this morning we're going to see why the Lord would say such a thing. We're going to see it exemplified perfectly.

Let's look at the situation. Verse 22, after this Jesus and his disciples went to the

Judean countryside and he remained there with them and was baptizing. John also was baptizing at Anon near Selim because water was plentiful there and people were coming and being baptized for John had not yet been put in prison.

Now in some ways, I think, I'm really, well in every way

I'm really enjoying the gospel of John, but in some ways we can kind of think of it as it really is a bit like a film in that it has one scene and then we have a dissolve and then maybe a transition and then another scene and that's what we get because we have to remember that John is writing long after the other gospels have been written,

Matthew, Mark and Luke, and he's filling in the gaps and so he's taken us to different scenes from the ministry of the

Lord Jesus so that we can get a better understanding and again with the idea of pointing out that he is the

Christ, the Messiah. So he's left Jerusalem, Jesus has, with his small band of followers, his disciples, and they go out to an area probably not too far from Jericho.

Now if you've been to Jericho, I mean I have been to Jericho and when we went there of course we took a slightly different route because when we went there it was a very narrow road and on one way was a straight down cliff and on the other side was a straight down cliff and it's a one lane road and it's barely wide enough for a bus and it was horrifying.

They didn't have to do that. But they went out there into this countryside near Jericho and we're not really told how long they were there or exactly everything that was going on.

What do you suppose, I mean if you think about it for a minute, Jesus, disciples, they're new, what do you suppose he's probably spending a lot of time doing,

I'll fill it in for you, teaching them, you know, but we don't have a record of that. But it does say that they, or that he was baptizing.

Well that's not really what's going on, let me just tell you. The disciples were baptizing and you say, wait a minute, it says he was baptizing.

It was under his auspices that baptism was being done, but look, just flip the page over at John chapter 4 verse 2 and we'll see that we know

Jesus himself personally was not baptizing people.

It says so right in verse 2, John himself, or I'm sorry, Jesus himself did not baptize but only his disciples.

So his disciples are the ones who are actually doing the baptizing but it kind of counts to Jesus because they're his disciples.

Now this next verse, I love and this is just kind of, you know, it's not that vital of a verse, but I love it, you know,

I say, you want to know why I don't baptize babies, why we don't baptize babies?

First of all, because we don't believe the Bible teaches it, otherwise we would do it. But secondly, it's something like John 3 .23,

where it says that there's much water, a lot of water, many waters there, and it's go, okay,

John the Baptist was baptizing people because there was a lot of water in this area. If he's just sprinkling people, he doesn't really need a lot of water.

It's just kind of, you know, unless he was really crazy and went out and did it by the handful and then ran a long ways, anyway, that's silly.

He obviously was submerging them. The word means to, it comes from dying cloth and you wouldn't take a bit of cloth and just kind of sprinkle, you know, die on it, that would be silly and the same thing here.

The idea is there's a lot of water there, makes it easy to baptize and that's why they were there. But in any event, the scriptures or the

Bible tells us here that John tells us that the disciples were repeatedly baptizing, they were just, people were coming up,

Jesus' disciples, and they were being baptized, John was baptizing, it was like a baptism fest.

You know, the Southern Baptist would have been just thrilled with what was going on.

But I think it's important for us to understand that what we don't have, there was some distance away.

It's not like, you know, Jesus was on this hill or, you know, on this fork of the stream and John the

Baptist was over here and they had competing signs, you know, be baptized here.

We, you know, we're open late over here, you know, on this side and they were just kind of like, oh yeah, well, we did this many today.

So probably they weren't Southern Baptists, I'm going to say. And there wasn't some kind of contest going on.

This was, you know, just a work of God going on at that time.

But now, again, verse 24, at first glance, it kind of seems like an odd comment, maybe out of place and if you have the

ESV, they've put it in parentheses. It says, for John had not yet been put in prison, you go, what does that have to do with anything?

Well, as I said, the Apostle John, the author of this gospel, is writing many years after the other gospels have been written.

He knows what's in them. And so he wants us to understand where this all falls in. Turn your Bibles for just a moment to Matthew chapter 4.

Matthew chapter 4, and this is right at the end of what's known as the temptation, the trial of Christ by Satan, where he tests him.

Matthew chapter 4, and if we look at verses 10 to 12, we read this.

Then Jesus said to him, be gone, Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the

Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him.

Now listen, verse 12. Now when he heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee.

So if we just read Matthew in a vacuum, we would think, well, wait a minute, obviously what happened is right after the temptation,

John gets arrested. That's not the case, and that's not what Matthew's saying, and John gives us clarification of that here.

He says, wait, John wasn't yet in prison. Again, what we need to understand when we're talking about the

Gospels is each writer emphasizes different things, they put things in different order, it's not, they're not wrong, it's just like if you read any biography, they emphasize different aspects of someone's life, and that's exactly what's going on here.

So now think about this, you know, back to the Gospel of John. Think about this situation. We have the

Son of God, and we have the greatest man who ever lived, as testified to by Jesus, and they've got these, their own little groups of disciples, and they're baptizing people like crazy.

I mean, it's just baptism, baptism, baptism, and you think, what a blessing, what could possibly go wrong,

I mean, this is, this is great. This is like if we could build a perfectly like -minded church across the street, and we were both growing like, you know, weeds, like dandelions out in my front yard, even during the snow,

I mean, they're popping up all over the place. But it would be like that, they, these, God was ministering to the nation of Israel in this way, and it's, it's incredible to think about it, you think, well, what could go wrong?

Well, then we come to the problem, verses 25 and 26. Now, discussion arose between some of John's disciples and the

Jew over purification. So what could go wrong? This. People getting sidetracked.

Some of John's disciples began wrangling, I just like that word too, wrangling with an unidentified

Jew, certainly someone with educational background, religious heft, maybe it could have been

Nicodemus, we don't know, but it was someone significant. And the subject of the argument was how someone could be made pure, how you purified someone.

Now keep in mind that we're not talking about, and I got a few questions about this after the first service, we're not talking about Christian baptism yet.

This isn't the church, these people aren't believers in Christ in the way that we would think of it now.

Baptism at this point was a ritual to acknowledge the need for purification.

It was an outward confession, not of belief in Christ, but of an understanding of their inherent sinfulness, of their need for cleanliness, spiritual cleanliness.

Now it was not typical for Jews to undergo this, and that's what made

John the Baptist's ministry such a big deal. Why the religious leaders came out and investigated him, why they interrogated him, because it really indicated when he started saying that people needed to be baptized that there was a deficiency in the

Jewish system. In fact before John the Baptist came on the scene, proselytes, those who converted to Judaism were those who would be baptized and to show, again, that they'd gone from a state of uncleanness to a state of cleanliness, and they did it to themselves.

No one baptized them. So John the Baptist was breaking all the rules, he was shattering all the paradigms, and they didn't really understand what he was about, and that's what set up the whole thing.

Now let's go back to this debate between John's disciples and the

Jew here. Some excitable Jew began debating some excitable disciples of John the

Baptist about how to properly purify oneself. Well when you think about it, what do people like to argue about, you know, the finer points of theology, and that's exactly what they were doing.

Especially newer believers in John the Baptist's disciples would probably be learning and growing and excited about things, and so let's just make our stand on some minor little point.

And again, some Jews were no doubt confused about the nature of John the Baptist's baptism.

Josephus wrote this, baptism was not in order to the putting away or the remission of some sins, but for the purification of the body, supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness, in other words, here was the

Jewish mindset. That you were made pure internally by your good works, not by God, but by your good works, and that externally you needed that washing of baptism, so that's, they saw this bifurcation, this division of the need for purification between the soul and the body.

So certainly that was wrong, and that's probably the focus of this debate between the Jew and between John the

Baptist and their discussion. But it's interesting because it reminds me of, you know, the party game telephone where you whisper something to somebody and then they whisper it to somebody else, or the new one where you draw a picture, by the way don't ever play this game with me because I can't draw at all, but you draw the picture and the person has to guess what it is and they write down what it is and then the next person has to draw a picture and so on.

And so, you know, you'll start with something like Pacific Ocean and by the time you get done it's a hamburger, and you just go, what happened, you know, same kind of thing.

So this debate that starts about purification, look what happens to it now, verse 26. And they came to John, his disciples, came to John and said to him,

Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan to whom you bore witness, look, he is baptizing and all are going to him.

They're not talking about purification, they're not asking questions about purification, there is an existential problem going on here and the existential problem is your ministry is going down the drain.

His disciples, John the Baptist's disciples, do show him respect, look at the wording, they call him

Rabbi, teacher, but who don't they give any respect to?

The one they see as the threat, the opponent, they don't even name him, it's

Jesus. He's not Jesus, they certainly knew his name, but they don't say Jesus, they don't call him the

Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, they don't call him anything like that, they say, the one who was with you across the

Jordan, the one to whom you bore witness, look, he is baptizing. He's a threat, he's a problem.

Remember that other guy? Why were they so dismissive? Why were the disciples of John the

Baptist so worried in a bad way about Jesus? I do think it's because they saw him as an existential threat to their ongoing ministry, the ongoing ministry of their teacher.

Look, they say, look, he is baptizing and all are going to him.

We've got a newsflash for you, Master. This new guy, Jesus, he's stealing your thunder, he's stealing your crowds, he's baptizing people just like you, and guess what?

He's gaining in popularity. Your poll numbers aren't what they used to be.

You need to smarten up here, you need a new marketing strategy. Have you ever thought about the internet?

How about a new website, johnthebaptist .com, realpurification .org? Maybe you should write a book,

Purification Made Easy. But they're speaking hyperbolically.

If they're still baptizing people, not everyone is going to Jesus to be baptized.

But they want their Master to understand the gravity of this situation. Don't you get it? We're drowning. We're about to die here.

Our ministry is going under for the third time. Your position is under assault. Your ministry is about to go down the drain.

You need to do something. So now we see the situation and the problem.

Now let's look at John the Baptist's joyful responses. First, joyful in the sovereign assignment of God.

Look at verse 27, John answered, a person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given from him or given him from heaven.

He's got his followers that are lining up, they're begging with him to do something. He responds in a way that his disciples could not have possibly expected.

He appeals to the sovereignty of God. That's exactly when we see from heaven, that's just a

Jewish euphemism for from God. Isn't it true in every situation, even as we heard last week in Daniel, if God sets up kings and rulers, if he is the source of our children, or whether or not we have children, if he's the source of our work, whether or not we have work, the source of our spouse, whether or not we have a spouse, as I often like to say, the woman thou gavest me, he's the source of wealth, food.

What do you have that is not a gift from God? Well, the only answer to that one would be what?

Sin. Sin is the only thing God doesn't give us. Listen to James 1 .17. Every good gift, that would exclude sin, and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the

Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. It's like James was listening.

It's like he learned something. Well he did. But every blessing in your life, material or immaterial, is from the hand of God, and it's the same for John the

Baptist, and he acknowledges that here. Now practically speaking, how does this apply?

Well what if you viewed everything that you had as a stewardship from God? What if you could strike the concept of mine from your thinking?

What if you thought of your house as God's house, your apartment as God's apartment, your car as God's car, your computer, your pets, whatever it is that is yours?

And I'm going to suggest that maybe you might have more gratitude.

You might be less envious. You might be more generous. You might be more satisfied.

You might, in the midst of panic, respond exactly like John the Baptist did. In effect he was saying, my ministry, everything that surrounds you guys, has been granted to me by God.

He gave it to me, and if he takes it away, guess what? Blessed be the name of the

Lord. I'm not worried. I'm fine. Do you think that way?

Whatever God ordains for me is for my good.

I trust him. That's how we ought to think. Furthermore, John the

Baptist was content in his role. Look at verse 28. You yourselves bear me witness.

You saw it. That I said, I am not the Christ, I am not the Messiah, I am not the

Savior, I am not the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world, but I have been sent before him.

He was the calm in the midst of the storm. He tells them what they themselves know, that he never said he was any of these things.

He was the forerunner. I'm doing exactly what

I was sent to do, he could have said. What are you guys so worried about? And again,

I invite you to insert yourself here. We don't normally do that. We don't normally say, where am I in the text?

Where is Waldo kind of preaching? But think about how this applies to your own life. How you could just say, you know what?

I'm exactly where the Lord wants me to be. I'm doing exactly what the Lord wants me to do.

I need to be content where I am. Now does that mean that you cannot strive for more?

No. It just means that you shouldn't complain about what's going on. You shouldn't panic about what's going on.

Second joyful response. He was joyful in the sovereign plan of God. Look at verse 29.

The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom who stands and hears him rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice.

Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He, Jesus, must increase, but I must decrease.

Now the first part of this is very simple. Well understand that at a wedding, it's the groom who gets the bride.

You know, maybe it's not so simple in Massachusetts and a few other states. Things can get a little dicey.

But then it was really simple. The one who has the bride is the bridegroom.

And he drives that home. Look at verse 29 again. The friend of the bridegroom. That's kind of an archaic term, but it basically refers to the best man.

It's not just any generic friend. This is a specific term that was used then. And we would call him now the best man.

And his job was to make many of the wedding arrangements. And the final thing he did, his final obligation, was to go and get the bride and to bring her to the bridegroom.

Once he did that, he was done. His job, his work was finished. Now imagine a best man today.

You know, you go to a wedding. Let's say you went to a wedding yesterday. You go to the wedding and the best man is the center of attention.

You know, every time you expect the bride and the groom to be kind of the front row, the focus of attention, here pops up the best man and say, hey, just a couple things about me.

You'd go, who is this guy? What kind of a, you know, best man would do that?

I mean, for you ladies, can you imagine having a maid of honor who just says, you know, can

I just pick the colors of the dresses and can I sort of do the decorations? And can we maybe just, you know, instead of you being the last one down the aisle, can

I, can the focus just be on me? You know, can you walk up a little early and then I'll stroll down, everybody can turn around and look at me.

You think that was crazy. And that's exactly John the

Baptist's point. He says, the friend of the bridegroom who stands and hears him rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice.

The best man isn't twisting in the wind, he's happy. His friend, the man that he loves, you'd have to presume he's, you know, best friends with him or really good friends, is happy for the bridegroom.

John the Baptist knows that he has fulfilled his role, that he's gotten to the point where it's time for him to kind of pack in his ministry.

Listen to John 1, verses six to eight. You don't need to turn there, but listen to this again. Here was the reason that he came.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John, referring to John the Baptist. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him.

He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. He never says, I'm the light.

He says, the light. So what does John the Baptist do now?

Now that his work is done, as it were? First, he rejoices. He says, this joy of mine is now complete.

That word complete means it's completed. Dead, it's a verb, means or full.

Some translations will say something like that, or filled. And it's a passive participle. It means perfect passive participle.

Perfect means that it's done once in time with ongoing results.

Like you believed and then you believe forever, that kind of thinking. But it's also passive because it's not something he did.

It was seeing Jesus that come to the point in this part of the ministry that made him happy, that made him joyful.

So he pronounces his intention to leave the spotlight. He says, he must increase, but I must decrease.

One writer calls this one of the greatest utterances that ever fell from human lips. Again, consider the scene.

John the Baptist is a man of considerable notoriety. The secular authorities know about him.

The religious authorities have got to investigate him. He is growing in popularity. Now, when someone today, when someone experiences success in their chosen profession, what do they do?

Generally speaking, they try to expand on it. It's not enough to be the best known attorney in town.

You form a whole corporation. It's not enough to have one single hamburger place.

You create a chain of fast food restaurants and you become McDonald's. This is what you do.

More money, more fame, more, more, more, more, more. So what

John the Baptist says here goes against every human impulse. But notice also, it's not just what he wants.

He says, he must increase, but I must decrease. The wording here is unmistakable.

This is a divine mandate. It's not a matter of his choice. Leon Morris wrote this.

He says, it is never the part of the servant to displace the master. John the

Baptist knew his role. He wasn't gonna hog the spotlight or try to steal it. Well, none of his disciples got it.

The notion of him trying to obscure or even compete with the ministry of the Lord was the opposite of his calling.

And he was happy to step back. Let me put it to you another way.

This is the first coming of the Lord, his visible ministry here on earth.

Let's just think about the second coming. Let's just say for you that the most important event of your life, the most anticipated event of your life was gonna be tomorrow.

Whatever it is, a wedding, a child, a promotion, a graduation, or like, you know, the stupid things

I used to think, a movie, a game, a CD, whatever. Something that was really gonna transform my life, a new car.

And then Jesus shows up at midnight tonight. So tomorrow, everything changes.

Would you say, you know what? Can you just come back tomorrow night at midnight? Because I got the most important event of my life is coming up tomorrow.

And I... No, because if you love him, you long for his appearing.

So think about it this way. John the Baptist, even though in some ways he's kind of at the peak of his ministry or his ministry is doing very well.

And, you know, Jesus is now coming along. Does he say, you know what?

Can you just fade off a little bit? No, because he's thrilled.

He knows that the moment has come for Jesus to really be on the ascendancy. What could be better?

What could be better? Matthew 3, verses one to three. Listen to the word of the

Lord. He says, in those days, John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea.

Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet

Isaiah when he said, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the

Lord, make his path straight. This is exactly what John the Baptist had done.

He'd prepared the way of the Lord. He had made his path straight. He had opened the ears of many, preparing them to hear from their

King. Like a herald, like an announcer, he'd gone before the

King, he'd done his work, and now the King was on the scene. His work was done. Now, we don't know a lot about John the

Baptist. I mean, there are a lot of things, let's put it this way, there are a lot of things we don't know. We don't know if he was married. We don't know, we don't know a lot of things.

I doubt that he was married. Who wants to marry a guy who eats locusts and honey and all that? And, you know, what's for dinner tonight?

Locusts and honey again? You know, I mean, what we do know about him is he possessed a laser -like focus on performing his

God -given mission, which was to point people to Christ. Once that was done, once the time had come to yield the stage to Jesus, he responded with joy.

He said, my work is done. I'm exiting. What greater joy can there be than to put

Christ on display and to declare his excellencies? You know, there's a saying going around now, and I mean, it sort of bugs me a little bit, but there's truth to it, and of course, the truth gets distorted in the application.

It's you only live once. That's true, but the idea behind this worldly concept is, you know, so you've got to do basically all the sinning you can while you're alive.

You know, just have fun. You only live once. Ought it not be for the glory of Christ?

Listen to this story here. John Lambert was a teacher and language scholar who was burned at the stake in 1538 for heresy because he preached the gospel of Christ.

Upon the day appointed for Lambert to suffer, he was brought out of the prison at eight o 'clock in the morning, Lambert being warned that the hour of his death was at hand and being brought out of the chamber, out of his cell into the hall, saluted the gentlemen present and sat down to breakfast with them, his executioners, showing neither sadness nor fear.

When breakfast was ended, he was carried straight to the place of execution at Smithfield in England. According to the record, the manner of his death was horrible.

After his legs were consumed by fire and the fire had died down by that point and there was just a little fire left under him, two of the guards pierced him with their halberds, which are these huge spear -like things with these chains on them, they're really nasty contraptions.

They lifted him as high as the chains on these halberds would reach. While he, raising his half -consumed hands, cried out to the people these words, none but Christ, none but Christ.

And so being let down again from their halberds, fell into the fire and there ended his life.

Right to the very end, faithful, John the Baptist, right to the end, faithful, pointing to Christ, giving his all and then saying, you know what?

I'm stepping away. I've done my work and it's time for me to recede and for Christ to be preeminent.

Let's pray. Father, what a blessed example you've given us even in a human being,

John the Baptist, how he yielded joyfully to your sovereignty, understanding exactly what he was sent here to do and just pointing to Christ and praising him.

Father, we would pray that you would apply this to our lives, that we might think of how we ought to preach

Christ. Now we can look back and preach Christ crucified, his perfect life, his substitutionary death, his resurrection.

Father, would you make these things preeminent in our lives that we might joyfully point to the risen

Lord Jesus Christ? And Father, let us not hold anything, whether it is tangible gifts that you've granted us or ministry, anything as being so important to us that we will not willingly yield them if that be your desire.

Lord, I pray that you would grant in our hearts a humility and a desire to serve our risen savior all the days of our lives.