He Must Increase

God Centered Theology

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John C. Maxwell said that the character of the man underlies the content of his message.

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The character of the man underlies the content of his message. There's a lot that could be studied and said about John the

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Baptist. There have been whole books written on him. There have been, in fact, the entirety of the conference that we had was on John the

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Baptist. And much is made of what he did, what he preached, his convictions, his drive, his focus.

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One thing we see from him is that his convictions drove his focus, his focus drove his behavior, and his behavior drove his message.

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His message is one that can be trusted. And just like John C.

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Maxwell's quote, if your character matches your message, then your message can be trusted too.

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You see, number one, this morning you need to understand that we all have a message. Every one of you, whether you've considered it one time or another, you all have a message.

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I'm not a huge fan of cliches. I mean, I use them like anybody else does. I try to catch myself and not use them as much because I think a lot of times cliches aren't completely representative of the truth they are attempting to convey.

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And sometimes we just fall back on them and think that's just a catch all. But one of the typical cliches you hear is that your life preaches more in your actions than the words you say.

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And there is a lot of truth to that. But if you are not careful that cliche may make people think that the spoken or preached word isn't important.

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So, take it with a grain of salt. But it is true that a lot of times, especially when you are out in public, if you are at the workplace, you are out there in the world, people are going to typically take a lot more from how you act, even before they'll even listen to what you say.

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But also too, things that you preach. And we are going to look at this a lot when we get back in the Colossians, understanding what a

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Christian shouldn't look like, and what a Christian should look like. And Paul draws the contrast, and he brings out all the legalism, all the judgmental behavior of man -made religion and contrasts that to the way we are to be in Christ.

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And fair or unfair, like it or don't like it, this world, due to the influence of Satan, has got it in their mind.

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And to a degree it can be true that all Christians are hypocrites, and we don't practice what we preach, so on and so forth.

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And all of us at one time or another, we all fail in that regard. But they are looking at what we are saying, and what we are doing.

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And you want to have a message that can be trusted, because God is going to providentially put you in opportunities, and give you what my pastor calls, divine appointments, where you have an opportunity to witness to somebody.

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You may have an opportunity to counsel with them, or put an arm around them in a time of mourning, or a time of grief.

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And see if what you've been saying matches up with what you do when the time comes, when they have a need, or if your character is going to be tested, or if you are going through a persecution, or a trial, and they want to see, how is this

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Christian going to respond? Then the message that you are ultimately preaching in both your word and your deed will be trusted, and it will be not just by Christians, but by non -Christians alike.

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This message that we have obviously will either drive trust, or distrust. And fortunately, there is always a chance, there is always time to turn around.

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Many of us have no doubt had periods in our life where we didn't live the way we should, we probably weren't in submission to the

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Word of God, weren't living and walking in Christ -likeness. And we look back on those times and say, man, you know, all the lost opportunity.

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All those times where I could have been living the right way, I could have been imaging my Savior better.

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And our message wouldn't have been trusted in those time periods. But if you turn it around in repentance, and faith, and confession, and move forward, and you follow

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Christ, walk in the salvation that we have freely, that message can be turned, it can be trusted, it can become stronger.

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Having the right things to say is fine. I think many of us have talking points or standard answers, things that we would say when certain situations arise, and those are all fine, well, and good.

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And they will mean something, and they mean far more when actions back it up.

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Think about it. If you had to pick between insurance companies, say, well this one over here has a really good commercial.

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But I talked to someone, they told me their service is just poor. I don't care how good their marketing is, you're not going to go with them.

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You've got a company over here, maybe their marketing isn't so good. Maybe they don't have a cute little gecko or some other cartoon animal selling their product on TV.

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But you know without a shadow of a doubt, if you're in a pinch, or if you need something done right, you go with them.

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And then you usually have someone, a company in the middle, good marketing, and it's amazing how so many times a good marketing program or good commercial, good advertisements can really draw you into something that you otherwise probably wouldn't have given a second thought.

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But that balance of good marketing with a good product, with good customer service, the words matching the actions, you tend to stick with those companies for a long time, don't you?

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I don't particularly do this, although I'm more fond of sheets, but I've known some older ones in my family and people I've come into contact with, they just flat out say,

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I'll drive an extra 20 miles just to find a particular gas station. It's all the same gasoline!

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But it's, and now obviously price shopping is a separate story, but it's all the same gasoline.

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But there are people, and some of y 'all may be like this, I don't know, there's nothing wrong with this, I'm just saying, it's you trust what you know.

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And me being the obsessive compulsive one that I am, I so badly want to try new things, and I try new things sometimes, and my wife is smiling and nodding her head because she knows this is true, and I try to convince myself

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I'm going to like this new thing, and I end up saying, God, I just got to go back to what I had. It's just not the same.

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It's just not the same. And so it may cost more, but as Henry Thorp has told me several times, sometimes it doesn't matter if it costs more, because sometimes paying more is worth it, because when you pay more and you get better quality, it's worth the extra money, is it not?

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I'm not going to go out and spend $2 and have something that's going to fall apart in a week, when you can spend $10 and it will last longer.

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That's the whole deal with me, and I'm such a nerd for these things. If any of y 'all are ever interested in these things, you can come sit down with me,

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I'll just open you up to a world you didn't know exists. But premium Bibles, I love these things.

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Now, you will spend $200 on just one. They'll never die. They'll never fall apart.

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I have one that I have used, and used, and used, and it is still intact. Now, you know the pretty colors wear off after a while, and so on and so forth, but they're made to last a lifetime.

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If you buy a little paperback Bible that costs you $5, it's perfectly fine.

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It's still God's Word. It's not going to last as long. Quality is something that matters.

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And in your message, in what you preach with word and deed, there can be quantity and quality.

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And I think in a lot of cases we should let the quality speak a little louder than quantity.

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And then sometimes quantity is important as well. Keep in mind that for John the

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Baptist, and for you as Christians, Christ's likeness that we talk about so often, it's not this pie in the sky, everybody floating around in some kind of cloud, being cheerful and sweet.

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Keep in mind that Christ also did turn over tables in the Temple. There is righteous anger.

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There's correction where there's love. There's justice. There's holiness. There's correction for sin.

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There's walking in righteousness. There's even partaking in the sufferings of Christ. There's understanding and developing perseverance through trials.

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There's examples that we have to us, and examples that we are for others. All of it, every bit of who

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Christ is, is what is wrapped up in what we call Christ's likeness. So many churches out there focus on just one thing.

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Or you'll hear someone talk about the love of God at the expense of His holiness or justice. Or you have some that go far too the other way and talk about only the justice and holiness of God, and forget about the love of God.

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The thing about God that we can't comprehend because we'll never be able to experience this or be this, is all the attributes of God, love, holiness, justice, righteousness, all of it.

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He's all of those things, all the time, at the same time, eternally.

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God will never be love and not be justice. He'll never be justice and not be love. I have no idea how that works.

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As humans, we are so pulled to one way or the other. Sometimes we're full on love and, you know, let people get away with murder.

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And sometimes we're so focused on justice, we have no mercy. So you've got to, you know, part of our

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Christ -likeness is developing that balance. And by developing that balance, to the extent that you demonstrate the attributes of God in your life, and do it under the submission of the

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Word of God, doing it rightly, your message and the amount that it's trusted will grow.

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John the Baptist's message was trusted. Why? Because his character and daily actions aligned with his message.

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He wasn't a hypocrite. It wasn't, well, you know, John's out there saying this and saying that, but, you know, when you get around John, it's something completely different.

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It was a match. It aligned. Everything he preached, when the time came, he backed it up.

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And we're going to see this in John chapter 3, beginning in verse 25, it says, "...therefore

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there arose a discussion on the part of John's disciples." Now, note, it didn't say Jesus' disciples.

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It said, "...on the part of John's disciples." John's disciples were the Jew about purification.

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So they were discussing the law of purification with this Jew, and his disciples likely were probably trying to decide whether to stay with John or follow

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Jesus. Because at this point, you know, Jesus is coming on the scene. He's going to start his public ministry.

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And these people that are living are not, you know, they're separated by time and space, but they have the same problems we do now.

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There's politics. There's power struggle. There's all these different things. There's business. There's marketing.

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Remember the example of the insurance company? There's marketing. There are all these things. These disciples of John were sinners.

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And we're going to see in a minute they were no doubt tempted by the fact that Jesus was growing a following. Look at America.

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Look at the churches that have the most people in them. They're not following God or the Bible. Now, in some cases they are.

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You can't paint with a completely broad brush here. There are very, very good

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God -centered mega -churches, and everything in between from 5 ,000 people to 5 ,000, and so on and so forth.

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But in large part, a lot of the big churches, it's following a man, or a personality, or a marketing scheme, or a get -rich -quick scheme.

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You know, sow your seed of $1 ,000 and God will give it back to you tenfold. Yeah, I'm not really that stupid.

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Just not. But John's disciples were no doubt having this issue.

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And you see it in this one instance, this is probably not the only case they had debate, or had a misunderstanding.

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But you know these people, and the whole book of Hebrews is written for this very purpose, helping people in Judaism understand that it is

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Christ that is the High Priest. There's nothing in Judaism that can save you, it's Jesus Christ's sacrifice.

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So you see these things playing out. This particular time is a debate over purification.

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Other times it might have been something else. Verse 26, and they came to John.

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So, you know, in like fashion, they couldn't decide something, so let's go to our leader, let's see what he says.

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They came to John and said to him, Rabbi, he who is with you beyond the Jordan, meaning Jesus Christ, to whom you have testified, behold he is baptizing and all are coming to him.

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Notice what is said in this verse. He, Jesus, who was with you beyond the

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Jordan, meaning you baptized him and were even with him beyond that, to whom you have testified.

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Part of John's message, in fact you could make the argument that the totality of John's message was preaching

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Jesus Christ. This is the One who has come. This is the

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Messiah. Behold the Lamb of God. I am but a voice crying in the wilderness.

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I am not even worthy to untie his sandals. He said,

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He is the Lamb of God. He is the coming One. He is the One you should be turning to. He is the One you should be following.

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John had preached this message and preached this message. And now they've got an issue where his disciples are coming to him and they want to see if his actions are going to back up what he has been preaching.

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And they give him the reason why they are coming to him at the end of the verse. I mean, after all it's

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John the Baptist. John did a lot of baptizing. We're saying, this Jesus guy, he's baptizing all kinds of people and notice it said, all are coming to him.

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Now I have no doubt that a lot of John's disciples were good, God -loving people that no doubt saw

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Jesus for who He was, and maybe some of them were just in maybe misunderstanding. But this would not be recorded for us today if this particular part were not true.

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I think a percentage, and I think to a degree you could make the argument that a vast majority of his disciples were coming to John because they saw

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Jesus as a threat. They said, man John we've had it good man. We're going around preaching, and you're baptizing, and we've got all this stuff going on.

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This Jesus guy is coming around now. Everybody is going to Him. So, in their minds it's like we've either got to stop that, or maybe we should just pack up and go home, man.

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We had a good run. Let's go over here with Him. I have no doubt that part of what they are saying here in verse 26 was designed quite possibly through their sin in nature, or maybe influenced by Satan directly, to test

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John. What would John do under pressure? Would John back up his message about Jesus when the time came?

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Because after all they told him, they said, He who is with you beyond the Jordan, whom you have testified, behold

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He is baptizing, all are coming to Him. John answered and said, a man can receive nothing unless it has been given to him from Heaven.

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You yourselves, watch this, you yourselves, meaning these disciples who were questioning

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John in verse 26, he's telling them right back to their faces, you yourselves are my witnesses.

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That I said, I am not the Christ, but I have been sent ahead of Him.

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John, without even blinking an eye, without even stopping to consider it, flat out said right back to his disciples, this is exactly what is supposed to happen.

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I've been telling you it was going to happen, and now that it's happening, it's like, well hold on here, this just doesn't feel right.

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This can't be right, right? Really? I mean we've had it good, and now everybody's going over there with him.

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John says, uh -uh, this is what was supposed to happen. And of course

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John reiterated that he had told them many times. He says, you're my witnesses. I've told you this.

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I not only told you it was coming, but as it's been happening, I've been telling you over and over again, this is what is supposed to happen.

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I am not the Christ, but I have been sent ahead of Him. He who has the bride is the bridegroom, but the friend of the bridegroom who stands and hears him rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom's voice.

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So this joy of mine has been made full. In these weddings, culturally at the time, you had your bride, your groom, and you had the bridegroom.

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And so this is what we would commonly call the best man nowadays. The best man's job was to get the bride and bring her to the wedding ceremony.

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And then once he got her to the ceremony with the groom there ready to be married, it was then that person's job, the bridegroom, the best man, to back off, step out of the way, because his role was not to be the groom.

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His role was not to be in the spotlight. His role was not to take over, or be in the place of the groom.

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His role was simply to bring the bride to the groom, and he backs off. And John uses this imagery to explain to his disciples,

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I'm doing exactly what my role is. I'm doing exactly what

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God has called me to do. It was my job at this moment in redemptive history to be baptizing and preaching about the

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Messiah. And at the point in time when I get the people to the point when Jesus Christ, the

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Messiah, the King is on the scene, it's then my job to back off, and step over here to the side.

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Because He's the Christ, not me. I was just sent ahead of Him. John uses perfect imagery, perfect illustration here to describe this.

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And of course he caps it off in verse 30 when he says, "'He must increase, but I must decrease.'"

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John had preached what should and would happen to his disciples numerous times, and this conflict certainly arose because of it.

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Anytime truth is preached, and not just general truth, but God's truth, conflict will arise between those who want to be in submission to God's truth and God's Word, and those who want to be sovereign and have it their way.

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These disciples were struggling with that. They wanted to have it the way they wanted to see it happen.

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John is saying, God has preordained that that is the Christ. And so these disciples struggled with what a lot of people struggle with today.

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It's not a matter of what man thinks, but what is God said. And this wedding imagery makes it very clear for John.

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So in terms of your message, you have to ask yourself the question, what is your role? If you're working, whether it's in an apartment store, or at a hospital, or a subway, or wherever it is you work, just because it's not in the church doesn't mean you don't have a

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Christian role to play. Your role may be as a food line manager. I had various roles, stocker, produce manager, store manager, system manager, tag person, cleaned up the bathrooms, done plenty of those.

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They were both nasty. I've done everything from mop floors, clean bathrooms, to run the whole joint.

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I even was over payroll for a whole district one time. A lot of life experience. But whatever it was, I had a role, and I had to play that role.

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All of you have a role, even if you're retired. Christianity doesn't stop when you retire.

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If anything, in retirement you have more time to serve the Lord specifically. There is no retirement plan in Christianity.

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Even in eternity there is no retirement. We're not just going to be floating around on a cloud somewhere, we're going to be serving the

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Lord, and the new earth. Understanding your role, and see this is key, and this will probably be a sermon for another day, but you can't go around evangelizing, and doing

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Bible studies, and all that stuff every place you go in life. There is context. There is time and place.

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There is a whole host of things that are going on. You've got to be so sensitive to the Holy Spirit's leaning, that within the role you're playing at the time, if it's at work, or if it's at home, or wherever you're at, understanding when you can say things, what to say, when not to say something, when to act, when not to act.

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There are so many variables that play out in the different roles that we play in life.

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And specifically to what John is saying, he says, in this particular role my job is to back off.

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Christ is here. Sometimes in life your role may be to step up and do something, or step up and speak something, or maybe stay off in the corner.

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We've covered all this when we talked about spiritual gifts, and understanding how your gifts work, and so on and so forth.

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But the key to all of it, and the one aspect of what John did that is perfectly in application to what we should be doing in our role, this is the one thing that binds us.

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No matter what we're doing, whether it was John dealing with this with his disciples, whether it's the role that you play, whether here, at home, or at work, or wherever you find yourself, the one key that binds all

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Christians is that everything we do should be for the promotion of Jesus Christ, and for the decrease of ourselves.

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The whole concept of sanctification is a setting apart of something as holy to God.

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Now this has an eternal aspect in our salvation. We're eternally set apart as holy to God.

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Our soul and spirit, we're as holy as we're ever going to be. It's our humanness, our sinful nature that resides within us that has to be continually sanctified.

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Continual repentance of sin, setting apart sins, choosing to follow Christ, choosing to walk in righteousness.

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That whole concept, everything that we do is about the continual increase of Christ in our life, and the decrease of us.

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Obviously John 3 .30 is quoted often, whole sermons are made around it, you know,

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He must increase, I must decrease. There's certainly nothing wrong with that. But when you take in the totality of verse 25, and the context leading into it, it takes on so much more meaning.

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Understanding why John said what he did. Why did he do what he did? The whole point of his ministry, the whole point of everything that we should be doing, is for Christ to increase, and for us to decrease.

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So one of the hard questions we always have to ask ourselves, and we have to look in the mirror and ask is, do we claim to follow

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Christ only for our actions to say otherwise? That'll make it hot under the collar a little bit, you start looking in the mirror and ask that one.

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Because you know what my friends, all of us fail in that regard. We get angry, we say this, or we, you know if you're at work and you have an opportunity to witness, or do something that would be standing up for Christ and out of our fear, we go along with the crowd, and you know you're around somebody and they're just telling just a filthy joke or something, and ah, you go ahead and laugh with it, and go along with it, instead of saying, hey guys, you know what,

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I'm sorry, I don't want to be around, I ain't going to be involved with that. Whatever it is, we all fail.

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We all have these opportunities where we could have had our actions aligned with what we preach better. And as, through our sanctification, we should be increasingly growing in our ability to allow

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Christ to increase and ourselves to decrease. Lastly this morning, asking the question, we've defined how

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John the Baptist's message was trusted, so I want to ask the question, how can our message be trusted?

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If you want your message to be trusted, then your actions and character must back it up. I go back to the quote from the beginning from John Maxwell, he said, the character of the man underlies the content of his message.

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This means some changes may be required. If you, you know, we're not going to preach this today, but in the context of Matthew chapter 7, not to judge hypocritically.

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We can make righteous judgments, we can call stealing wrong. But if you're a thief, and you go around telling everybody to stop stealing, your actions aren't matching your preaching and your message isn't going to be trusted.

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That's a very simple example, but it makes the point. So, if you're a thief, you need to first make the change to stop being a thief, and then you can start preaching about that.

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We always need to look at the small piece of wood in our own eye first, and deal with that.

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Now, the world would say you can't ever make any judgments ever, it's just not the case. We are to make righteous judgments, call sin what it is, correct it, call people to repentance.

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But we don't need to do this in a judgmental or hypocritical way, because our message won't be trusted in that regard.

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But one of the keys I think Christians struggle with more than anything when it comes to the subject of your message being trusted is this, and I'm going to do it in the form of a question, do you think that you are too far gone, or that God no longer cares about you, after how you might have lived up until this point?

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Or based on something you may have did in the past? My friends, more Christians have been crippled and stopped in their tracks over stuff they did 20 plus years ago, that they're still living in guilt and fear over.

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I'm going to tell you a little secret, because of what Jesus did, you don't have to live that way.

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He didn't die for us to live in constant guilt and fear. We're called to live victoriously, have an abundant life spiritually.

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I don't care what you've done. I don't care if it was yesterday.

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I don't care if it was 10 years ago. I don't care if it's something you have planned for tomorrow.

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Repent! Walk in Christlikeness. Make changes that are necessary.

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My friends, and this is just, I'll just be completely honest with you, this is one of the theological principles

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I struggle with the most, but I believe it because God has said it. The idea that God has forgiven me for things

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I've already done, I can wrap my head around that. I can work with that. But the fact that I'm eternally forgiven for things

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I haven't even done yet, try to wrap your head around that one.

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Because, newsflash, we live in time. God lives outside of time. Everything for us is linear.

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He sees it all from beginning to end. One of my favorite memes that I've seen, one of His favorite quotes that I see is, you know,

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God knows everything that could possibly be known about you and He still died for you. Wow!

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Think about your life. And this sort of gets outside of sin too.

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You know, there are things other than sin that can harm our message. Your circumstance is overwhelming.

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Actions or character, you feel like you've been just too bad for too long. Maybe it's marriage issues.

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Maybe it was some way in the way you grew up. Maybe you didn't have a good father or mother. Maybe you didn't have either. Maybe you had one. Or maybe it was an abusive relationship.

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I don't know. There's so many variables. Maybe it's ongoing mental struggle, like things that I struggle with.

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Maybe it's, there's some physical ailment, like we talked about with Ms. Todden, the quadriplegic in the wheelchair.

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And, of course, there could be some sin grippling you, laziness, pride, lust, fear, discontentment.

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It runs the gamut. Whatever you're facing, whatever it is that is keeping you from being the man or woman in Christ that you should be, you need to know that God already knows that about you.

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He already knows. And He still died for you. And He died for you. And He still chose to die for you anyway.

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There's nothing about you He can learn. All of your sin, all of your struggles, everything that keeps you from having a message that's trusted like John the

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Baptist, He already knows it. You're not going to surprise Him.

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And His Word, not what man thinks, but what God has said, His Word still says

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He can live in and through you, and you can have a message that's trusted just like John the

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Baptist. So don't be betrayed by what Satan tries to get you to think.

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Don't be betrayed by your own thought life. Don't be betrayed by anyone else out there. Believe what

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God has said. Believe what the Holy Spirit testifies to you in and through you, because the

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Holy Spirit indwells you. We don't have some foreign God that is not subject to our weaknesses.

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He lived among us. He tabernacled among us. Everything we face,

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He has faced. He knows.

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That's why He's our perfect High Priest. He must increase.

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That was John's message, and I pray it is the message that your life demonstrates on a daily basis.

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And if not, I call you to repentance, to rededicate yourself, to be in submission to God's Word.

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Study God's Word. Be in it. Pray. Ask the Holy Spirit to illuminate

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His Word for you. He will. He's promised us that. Allow Christ to work in your life, and transform you 100 % into greater