WWUTT 816 A Person Cannot Receive Even One Thing?

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John the Baptist said that a person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven.

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So what does a man have that he may boast in himself? Nothing when we understand the text.

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This is when we understand the text studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ.

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Thank you for subscribing and if this has ministered to you please let others know about our program. Here once again is

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Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you Becky. Well my voice is a little bit on the weak side today, we'll just see how far we get.

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I may have to cut this short if my voice doesn't hold up. We're back in John chapter 3 and starting in verse 22,

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I'll read to the end of the chapter. The Apostle John wrote, After this

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Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he remained there with them and was baptizing.

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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 thrown in prison.

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Now a discussion arose between some of John's disciples and a Jew over purification.

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And they came to John and said to him, Rabbi, he who was with you across the

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Jordan to whom you bore witness, look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him.

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

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

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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.

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

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He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way.

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He who comes from heaven is above all. He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony.

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Whoever receives his testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true.

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For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the spirit without measure.

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The father loves the son and has given all things into his hand. Whoever believes in the son has eternal life.

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Whoever does not obey the son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

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So back to verse 22, after this, after what? Well, Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus, which we were considering in verses 1 through 21.

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So after all of that had transpired, Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside and he remained there with them and was baptizing.

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Now we know that Jesus himself was not the one who was doing the baptizing. We don't get that clarification until chapter 4 verse 2.

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Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples. Now why would that have been?

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Well because Jesus came baptizing with fire and with the Holy Spirit. Remember that's what

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John the Baptist said of Christ. When he was asked if he was the coming Messiah, John the

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Baptist says, no, there's one who's coming who's sandal straps I am not even worthy to untie.

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And when he comes, it's not with water he's going to baptize. He will baptize with fire and with the

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Holy Spirit. So Jesus himself was not the one who did the baptizing, especially when you consider how boasting a person would have been after it had been revealed following Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection from the grave.

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It would have been unveiled to everyone that he was the Messiah. He was the promised one.

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Then there would have been people going, I got a better baptized, a better baptism.

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There you go. That's the word. I got a better baptism than you got because I was actually baptized by Jesus himself.

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You were just baptized by one of his disciples or baptized by somebody else. So you can see how someone would be boasting in that.

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The apostle Paul actually had to confront that with the Corinthians. There were people who were boasting that they had a better baptism than someone else.

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And Paul was saying, I'm glad I didn't baptize any of you because then you would have been baptizing in the in the baptism that I gave you.

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So there were there were also those who were boasting about the teachers that they followed.

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So in first Corinthians chapter one, Paul says, what I mean is that each one of you says

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I follow Paul or I follow Apollos or I follow Cephas or I follow

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Christ. And not in the way that a person should follow Christ, but in that boasting way, I'm better than all of you.

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Hey, I just believe the Bible. You know, it's like it's something like that. I don't need your creeds and confessions.

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I just believe what the Bible says. And Paul says, is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

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I thank God that I baptize none of you except Christmas and Gaius so that no one may be able to say that you were baptized in my name later on in chapter three, verse four.

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For when one says, I follow Paul and another, I follow Apollos. Are you not being merely human?

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What then is Apollos? What is Paul servants through whom you believed as the

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Lord assigned to each? I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.

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So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only

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God gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one and each will receive his wages according to his labor.

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For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field,

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God's building. And it's that same principle that Paul talks about with the Corinthians that we see coming into play here in John chapter three.

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For what happens is that Jesus and his disciples are baptizing and John and his disciples are baptizing and John, the

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Baptist disciples think, Hey, wait a minute. Jesus is the one that John bore witness about.

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So shouldn't Jesus be giving us some recognition and there's all these people who are going to Jesus and not coming to us anymore.

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Aren't we the one? We kind of originated this thing. We're the ones that perfected the baptism thing.

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This is our deal. You know, Jesus can go do his own thing. And that's kind of the conflict that arises here between John's own disciples and the rest of the

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Jews and even their perspective of Jesus and what it is he's doing. So then we go on here, verse 23,

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John also was baptizing at Enon near Salim because water was plentiful there.

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All that means is that John was in proximity with Christ. So where they were baptizing, they were in pretty much a similar region.

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This location that we're being told about, Enon near Salim or Enon near Salim.

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This was on that western side of the Jordan in the Judean countryside. So the same place

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Jesus and his disciples are, John the Baptist and his disciples aren't far away because there was plenty of water there.

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So that's why both were there baptizing and people were coming and being baptized. And notice the parenthetical reference we have in verse 24 for John had not yet been put in prison.

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Everything that we're reading about up to this point, these first three chapters of John, this had all taken place prior to John the

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Baptist's arrest. Now when you go to the Gospel of Mark, that's where we have like the least amount of story told prior to John's arrest, because it's in chapter one, verse 14, that John gets arrested.

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Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God and saying, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.

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Repent and believe in the gospel in the gospel of Matthew. That doesn't happen until chapter four.

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So we have a lot more of Jesus story prior to John the Baptist arrest.

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And then in here in the gospel of John, we've got quite a bit of story there as well.

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But this is the last we're going to see of John the Baptist here. What we have in chapter three. Now as John makes this mention,

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John, the apostle makes a mention here in verse 24, John had not yet been put in prison.

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This is another one of those indicators that we get that John assumes a lot with the telling of this gospel.

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Like some of this you've heard before, as John is writing this, you've heard about the crucifixion of Christ, that he rose again from the grave.

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You heard that he was betrayed by Judas. You know about John the Baptist. He was arrested and beheaded by Herod and was martyred.

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So John, as he's telling this gospel kind of late in the game, like all the all the other three have been told

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Matthew, Mark and Luke and and what was preached by Paul, so on and so forth. All of this had spread far and wide.

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John is writing his gospel much later than theirs. So he's assuming that you've heard all of this.

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He's just giving a different perspective and sharing more about what Jesus did in what he tells in his gospel.

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More discourses, more of Jesus teaching is in John's gospel. And so so he is, again, assuming that the readers know about John the

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Baptist being arrested and beheaded. And he's making sure that you understand these things that have transpired.

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This was all prior to his his arrest. Now, a discussion arose between some of John's disciples and a

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Jew over purification. That's verse twenty five. I'm going to come back to that. And they came to John.

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So John's disciples came to John and said to him, Rabbi, he who was with you across the

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Jordan to whom you bore witness, look, he is baptizing and all are going to him.

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Now, we don't have much told to us here in verse twenty five as to what kind of argument this was that came up between John's disciples and a

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Jew over purification. But we've got a pretty good idea that John the

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Baptist disciples were the ones who initiated this particular argument. Now, what makes us draw that conclusion?

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Well, they seem to be very immature in their understanding of what it is exactly that John the

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Baptist is doing and what baptism is supposed to symbolize, like they don't even really understand that all that well.

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So whatever this discussion was with this Jew over purification, I mean, we can go a lot of different ways with that.

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We could be talking about the laws that the Pharisees imposed upon the Jews that actually was not in the law of God.

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So extra laws of purification. We could be talking about those laws of purification that deal with diet or with ceremonial cleanliness.

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But more than likely, this discussion had something to do with baptism, because it's as if the

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Jew has said something to John's disciples about whose baptism was better.

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Like you guys, you've got, you know, John's baptism. There's this baptism you're doing over there is

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Jesus baptism. So which one has the better baptism? Who has the pure baptism?

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And maybe that was this discussion that had arisen with John's disciples. So over the the over this argument that they're having, they come to realize and understand

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Jesus and his disciples are baptizing and people are going to them. And this Jew is saying, well, he's got the better baptism.

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So I'm going over there to them. So the disciples come to John and they say to him,

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Rabbi, which is just a word that means teacher. He who was with you across the Jordan, of course, that was

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Christ, whom John the Baptist testified about, saw him on several occasions.

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Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And of course, John baptized

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Jesus. And they say he who is with you across the Jordan to whom you bore witness.

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John was also a a cousin of Jesus, by the way, look, he is baptizing and all are going to him.

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And it's like they're upset about this. Hey, you bore witness about him.

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So shouldn't he be showing us a little bit of love here? He shouldn't be stomping on our territory because he would not even have the following that he has unless if it wasn't for the fact that you gave this testimony about him.

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That's what John the Baptist disciples truly believe. Jesus wouldn't even have this ministry that he's doing if it wasn't for you.

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So why is he on our territory and now all these people are going to him and we don't have the people following us anymore?

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And what was John's response to them? Verse 27, John answered, a person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given to him from heaven.

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It's in John, chapter 15, verse five, where we read that famous verse, Jesus speaking to his disciples,

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I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit for apart from me.

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You can do nothing. And John the Baptist understands that here, a person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given to him from above.

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Go back to something that Jesus said in John three, three to Nicodemus. Jesus answered him, truly, truly,

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I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

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Now, I don't know if you looked at that carefully at that, at that pair of words born again, but your

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Bible may have a little reference marker there. And in the footnotes, it may say, or born from above.

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That's another way that that could be translated that someone is born from above. See, this being born again and going back to what

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I taught on that we are physically alive, but we're spiritually dead when we're born.

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We have dead spirits, a sin nature that is rebellious against God that desires to do only those things that gratify our flesh rather than doing what is honorable and pleasing to God.

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And it's not until we are given a new heart that desires

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God and his will to do what is what is his will and is pleasing unto the

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Lord. It's not until God does that for us that we no longer walk in our sinful ways, but instead walk in righteousness.

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And this is a rebirth that must come from above. It is given to us by God.

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It is the giving of the spirit of God into an otherwise dead man's soul that we might live again.

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We no longer walk in the dead ways that we were in, but we are now born again to new life in Christ.

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And this comes from God. It comes from above. We are born again.

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As we read back at the start of the gospel of John, John chapter one, verse 13, we are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

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And so John the Baptist makes this recognition here that we can't receive anything unless it is given to him from above, unless it comes to him from God in heaven.

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So as John the Baptist disciples are trying to say, look, we had this thing going on before they did,

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John is countering them and saying, we can't do anything if it had not been given to us from heaven.

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And didn't you hear me say to you who this was, that he who has come from heaven, the lamb of God who came to take away the sin of the world?

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So John goes on to say, you yourselves bear me witness that I said, I am not the

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Christ, but I have been sent before him. The one who has the bride is the bridegroom.

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The friend of the bridegroom, John says, referring to himself, who stands and hears him rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice.

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

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This is John saying, hey, if he's taken up the ministry, then that's exactly what should be happening.

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What he's doing over there, that's what he came to do. I was just preparing the way.

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So now that you've said to me that he is out there doing this, well, you know what that means? It means that I must become less.

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I must decrease so that the ministry that he's doing is increasing. It's better for us that we don't take anyone from him rather than, you know, the squabbling that John the

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Baptist disciples were doing, that Jesus and his disciples were taking people away from them.

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Well, that's great because I don't have the words of eternal life, John the Baptist says. Jesus does.

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That's who the people should be going after. So I'm going to decrease so that he increases, that the ministry of Christ is proclaimed unto all the world.

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Here it's just going to be Judea for the time being, but the gospel of Jesus Christ will go into the whole world so that all who hear it will not perish, but have everlasting life.

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And we'll pick up there tomorrow. We'll come back to what John said about how I am not the

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Christ, but I've been sent before him and the one who has the bride is the bridegroom. What was the reference that he was making here?

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He actually goes back to some Old Testament passages in his reference to Christ as the bridegroom.

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We often think of Christ as the bridegroom because of what is said in the New Testament about him, and that's certainly true.

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But there are Old Testament references there before we get to the church being described as the bride of Christ and Christ is the bridegroom.

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That's what we'll get to tomorrow. Dear Lord, we thank you for this scripture that we have read today as we read about Christ, the one who has the words of eternal life, and that we would be filled up with this word and have life more abundantly, that we live fully unto you today, pleasing and acceptable to you.

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For we were once dead in our sins and our trespasses, but we have been made alive together with Christ.

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So now let us live according to the new birth that we have been given, giving you joy and glory and honor in all things.

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Not trying to take any glory for ourselves, not trying to give glory to any man who certainly does not deserve glory that belongs only to Christ.

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For he is the one who has saved and called us to himself. And it's in the name of Christ that we pray, whom we desire to honor and exalt today.

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Amen. Pastor Gabe keeps a regular blog sharing personal thoughts, alerting readers to false teachers, and offering commentary on the church and social issues.

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You can find a link to the blog through our website, www .utt .com. Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's Word when we understand the text.