1. Becoming Less Series

Good morning. Please open your Bibles to John 1.

A few years ago I started seeing this symbol on the backs of cars around town. I had no idea what it meant. At first I thought it was a new model of car— like the BMW HeVi or something. Then I thought, well, maybe they wanted to brag that they had a HEMI, but they just misspelled it.

It wasn’t until someone pointed out to me that the little arrow symbol was a “greater than” symbol that the light came on for me. Now, this is the only time you’ll see me do math in public because I barely got beyond Schoolhouse Rock when it comes to math, but I do remember Mrs. Greene teaching us in fourth grade that “the sign always points to the lesser number.”

So the way this reads is He is greater than I.

• Not He equals I.

• Not I am greater than He.

• He is greater than I. I am less than He.

The logo comes from a couple of Christian surfers in Hawaii who wanted to come up with a distinct brand for their surfwear company. One of the guys had claimed John 3:30 as his life verse: He must increase, I must decrease. Or as the New International Version words it, “He must become greater; I must become less.”

Now, y’all know who this was said about, right? Right— Jesus. But how many of you know who said it? That’s right. John the Baptist, or John the Baptizer.

So as we begin our series called “Greater Love,” which will take us all the way to Easter, we are going to look at the forerunner of Jesus, his cousin John the Baptist. Because if there was ever someone who understood the assignment, it was John the Baptist. John was born for only two things:

• to prepare the way for Jesus,

• and to point the way to Jesus.

When it comes down to it, isn’t that supposed to be our assignment too? Every Christian needs to understand the assignment. So this morning, we want to talk about how to prepare the way for Jesus and to point the way to Jesus. Let’s go to God’s Word. This is John 1:19-23

READ John 1:19–23

Now skip down to verse 29

READ John 1:29–37

This is God’s Word. Let’s pray.

[pray]

How did John prepare the way for Jesus? How do we? John knew Jesus was coming the first time, we know Jesus is coming again. So our assignment is the same. How do we do it? The first step is to

1. Don’t think more of yourself than you should (John 1:19-22)

Picture the scene. This is probably around six months before Jesus began his public ministry. Matthew and Mark tell how large crowds came to the Jordan River in order to be baptized for the forgiveness of sin. Mark specifically says “The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him (Mark 1:4-5).

Now, that could give anyone a big head, couldn’t it? Everybody in the area is talking about you and your ministry. Today we would call it going viral.

And remember that this was a time in Israel’s history where expectations of the Messiah (“Christ” in Greek) coming were at an all time high. The Jewish people were tired of being subjugated to Rome. They were tired of high taxes and corrupt government officials.

And so the religious officials went out and asked John, “Are you the Christ?” And John answered point blank. No.

The Jews knew their Scripture. They knew that Malachi prophesied that Elijah would come before “the great and terrible day of the Lord” (Malachi 4:5-6). So they asked him, “Are you Elijah.” And once again, John denied it. “I am not.”

Now its worth chasing a rabbit for a little bit here, because you might remember that before John was born, the angel Gabriel told Zechariah that he would go before the Messiah “in the Spirit and power of Elijah” (Luke 1:17). And that’s just it— John was born in the spirit and power of Elijah. Not as the reincarnation of Elijah. Even if reincarnation was true, which it isn’t, Elijah never died, so he couldn’t be reincarnated, and he couldn’t be born as a different person.

So finally the religious leaders asked John if he was the Prophet. This was related to yet another Messianic prophecy, this one from Deuteronomy 18, where God promised he would send another prophet like Moses.

And once again, John said no. John had every opportunity to doctor up his resume, inflate his credentials. He was given three chances to make himself sound more impressive than he was. And notice the implication of verse 25. The religious leaders are saying, look, if you aren’t the Christ, or Elijah, or the Prophet, then you have no authority to be baptizing. We could shut down your entire ministry.