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That's connectwithskip.com. Now let's get into today's teaching from Pastor Skip Heitzig. Jesus and His disciples came into the land of Judea, and there He remained with them and baptized. Now John was also baptizing in Aon near Salim because there was much water there, and they came and were baptized. For John had not yet been thrown into prison, and there arose a dispute between some of John's disciples and the Jews about purification. And they came to John and said, Rabbi, He who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you have testified, that is Jesus.
Behold, He is baptizing, and all are coming to Him. Now let's stop right there and let's go through some of these verses. Let me begin by saying pride is a cancer to the human soul. Nothing is more destructive to humanity than pride. Pride is what kicked Lucifer out of heaven. Pride is what took Adam out of the garden. Pride is what took Saul the king out of the kingdom.
Pride destroys relationships, friendships, marriages, families, work-colleague relationships, ministries, churches. And at this point, pride is tempting John the Baptist. John the Baptist is at a very, you might say, successful ministry because people from Jerusalem and all around Judea heard about this crazy, bug-eating, long-haired, weird dressing preacher down by the Jordan River. And they flocked just to see what he was about and to hear him. Even the religious bigwigs came.
People, more people, more controversy, more people. But now, now Jesus' ministry is gaining more attention. John the Baptist baptized Jesus, as our Lord identified with us in the waters of baptism. But now Jesus' ministry is beginning to overshadow that of John the Baptist. And John's disciples, his senior staff, is noticing that. Hey John, you know Jesus' church is growing bigger than yours. He's got a lot more people coming to him. They're flocking after him.
They're following him. And we get here then John's response to this issue. What he says about this temptation to become envious of what's happening with Jesus and with the disciples. John had a very lonely ministry. He was a voice crying in the wilderness, make straight the ways of the Lord.
And he will be put into prison. And while he's in prison, he's going to have second thoughts, even sending a messenger asking, Jesus, are you the one we're looking for or should we seek another? But at this point, a controversy is stirred up because of what is happening with Jesus and John the Baptist. And here's what you're going to see, that John the Baptist has a very mature response, one that we can learn from. And I would say, especially if you're the jealous type, if somebody else, if the spotlight is shining on them, if somebody else's life or ministry is eclipsing yours and you're feeling those tendencies toward bitterness or envy, John the Baptist provides good fodder for a cure to that. So there arose, verse 25, a dispute.
Well, let's go back. In verse 22, it says, his disciples came to the land of Judea and there he remained with them and baptized. Now, before you think Jesus was out there baptizing, he was not, because if you go down to chapter four, verse one, therefore, when the Lord himself knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John. Now notice the parenthetical statement that follows, though Jesus himself did not baptize, but his disciples, he left Judea and departed again to Galilee. So Jesus wasn't doing the baptism, his disciples were doing the baptism, but the activity brought anxiety. And that's why in verse 25, there arose a dispute between some of John's disciples and the Jews about purification.
And it was that dispute with the religious elite, the religious leaders of Judaism, that caused those feelings of animosity toward Jesus' disciples, and even Jesus himself to arise in the senior staff of John the Baptist. And that's why they came to him and said, Rabbi, he who was with you beyond the Jordan to whom you have testified, behold, he is baptizing and all are coming to him. You probably already know this, but in case you don't know this, I want to save you from becoming disillusioned about the church. Many people do get disillusioned with church. That is because they assume that these are all saved people. And we are, if you're in the church, you are a saved individual. If you belong to Christ, you're saved of your sin. However, it doesn't mean that you are sinless.
It doesn't mean that you are perfect. And the disillusionment comes in when all of a sudden I'm a brand new believer, I'm in this church thing, I'm following Jesus, I'm with brothers and sisters who are following Jesus, and then we discover flaws in our new family. And so some respond by looking for a different family. They bounce around from place to place hoping that they'll find the perfect church. But every time they find the perfect church, they ruin it because they join it. You see, the church is not a society of the perfect. It's a society of the redeemed.
And there's a huge difference between that. It's not perfect people without fault. It's redeemed people who express their spirituality through human personality. And whenever you express spirituality through human personality, that's a tainted faucet. It's a tainted pipe.
It's going to come out with that personality around it. It's how the Lord designed it, by the way. I know, you're going, but wait a minute, we're a spiritual family. And if we're a family, we shouldn't have disputes.
Really? What family do you come from? I'd like to know what planet you were born on. Because listen, I love my family, but I remember family vacations in the back of a Rambler station wagon for hours and days. And though I loved my brothers on that vacation, I had second thoughts about my love for them. In fact, I'm sure during that confinement in the backseat with my brothers, I swore I hated them. That's being a family.
That's just the reality of family. So don't get disillusioned. In fact, if you're a Bible student, you are not disillusioned. You read that throughout the Bible this stuff happened. You go back to Genesis 13, you have Abraham and you have Lot. Those are relatives. They're in the same family. But we keep reading and we discover that Lot's herdsmen and Abraham's herdsmen had a conflict. And it was a conflict that caused them to separate company from one another.
That's severe. And then we read the Gospels and we have 12 apostles. You think, oh, come on, the apostles, Jesus chose those guys. He only chooses perfect people.
Again, I don't know what planet you're from. No, Jesus chooses sinful people. And he takes raw stuff. And he renames people, not because they're perfect, because this is what I'm going to make you into. You're just a bunch of sand, but I'm going to make you into something solid, Peter.
So I'm going to give you a new name. And those apostles, we discover, argued about who's going to be the greatest in the kingdom. Not just once, but several times. As the church moves on in the book of Acts, in the 15th chapter, we find the great apostle Paul and his buddy in ministry, Barnabas, had a dispute and argument. And it says the contention was so sharp between them that they parted company. They went in two different directions. You say that's tragic.
No, actually, it's quite wonderful. Because there will be a reconciliation. But in the meantime, now you have two groups that the Lord can use in two different places. And so there can be multiplication even by division, even if it's imperfect and sinful. The Lord can use that.
Listen, I want you to know this. God reserves the right to use people that disagree with you. You're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before we return to Skip's teaching, we want to help you and the children in your life see the timeless story of Christ from cradle to cross with Nate Heitzig's new book, Christmas Under the Tree. Told through the eyes of an unlikely character and graced with illuminating illustrations, this gripping tale is rooted in the limitlessness of Christ's love and helps young readers understand why Jesus left heaven to be born under and die upon a tree. This exciting resource, along with a companion audio experience, are available to you now as our way of saying thanks for your gift of $25 or more to reach more people with God's love through Connect with Skip Heitzig.
Go to connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888 and request your copy when you give. Now, let's get back to Skip for more of today's teaching. News flash. God reserves the right to use people that disagree with you. And there was a disagreement. There was a dispute that arose and a little bit of envy and jealousy between the senior staff of J. the B., John the Baptist, and Jesus. And so they bring it to him. Now, listen to John the Baptist answer.
It's very revealing. It reveals the maturity of this cousin of Jesus, John the Baptist. John answered and said, A man can receive nothing unless it has been given to him from heaven.
Now, stop right there with that statement. Man can't receive anything unless God gives it to him. This reveals that John had a proper theology. John would say, I believe God is sovereign. God is in charge. God is in control. And because God is sovereign and God is in control, nobody gets really away with anything. God does what he wants through people.
Nobody can receive anything unless God gives it to him. So if God is doing this, who am I to stand in the way? If God has given me this place, that's what God has given me.
God is sovereign. He has a proper theology with that statement. He continues, You yourselves bear me witness that I said, I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him. Now, this reveals that John has a proper understanding.
He would say, I know my calling. I know who I am. I told you I'm not the Christ. I told you I'm just a voice calling in the wilderness. That my job is to point to the one. I have a proper understanding not only of who God is, but I have a proper understanding of who I am and I am not the Christ. I'm not the Messiah.
I can't solve all the problems. I'm just a servant. I know my calling. Then he says this, he who has the bride, he's using an analogy now of a Jewish wedding. He who has the bride is the bridegroom, but the friend of the bridegroom, we would call that the best man today, who stands and hears him rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom's voice. Therefore, this joy of mine is fulfilled.
This reveals John had a proper attitude. He's saying, I'm just so glad that I'm Jesus' best man. And I'm so happy for Jesus, the Messiah, the Word. I'm just the voice.
He's the Word. And I'm glad that he has a bride, that he is calling out his bride. I'm just happy my friend, to use the analogy, is getting married. What kind of a best man would it be if he's at a wedding grumbling and complaining, man, I'm just so bummed out. This guy's getting married and I'm not. So the wedding party comes into the church, the bride and groom come up, and the best man's standing right here just scowling and just angry because this guy's getting married and he's not. That's the worst man, not the best man. So John has a proper theology, a proper understanding of his calling.
He has a proper attitude. Therefore, this joy of mine is fulfilled. And then verse 30, he must increase, but I must decrease. This shows he has a proper relationship to what God is doing through him and through his cousin Jesus. Since I know that God is sovereign, since I know who I am and who I'm not, since I'm happy that I'm just the best man at this wedding and the bridegroom is calling out his bride, I realize that it's about him, not about me. Less of me, more of him. That's the proper relationship.
Less of me, more of him. John the Baptist was the herald, the announcer, the voice. And a herald was one in olden times who would announce the presence of the king. Once the herald announces, the king is coming, the king is coming. Once the king comes, the herald doesn't need to stand around going, look at me, the king is coming, look at me. We see the king.
That's old news now. Get out of the way, herald, announcer. Let the star come on the stage and assume his rightful place. He must increase, I must decrease. It's like the moon and the sun. The moon in the sky is wonderful at night, but it diminishes at sunrise. When the sun begins to gain strength, we would say, even though it's 93 million miles away from the earth, that little ball can shine brightly and cover the land and do a much better job than the moon.
So the moon naturally diminishes so that the sun might do its thing. So John understands all of this, and he shares it. He must increase, and I must decrease. William Carey, most of you know the name William Carey. He was one of the great missionaries in mission history to the nation, the subcontinent of India.
Very effective. I visited the place in India where he landed and set up his ministry, and he made a great impact in that land. Well, by the time that he died, William Carey was well-known and well-respected.
And he was on his deathbed in India, in the subcontinent of India. And when he was dying, he said to those around his deathbed, when I'm gone, don't talk of William Carey. Talk of William Carey's savior. Talk of William Carey's savior. He says, I want to make sure that he alone is glorified. That's a John the Baptist attitude. Talk of William Carey's savior.
And so they did. And to this day, the gospel is still being spread around that area. He who comes from above, verse 31, is above all. He who is of the earth is earthly. He who speaks and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all. And what he has seen and heard, that he testifies. And no one receives his testimony. He who has received his testimony has certified that God is true. For he whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God does not give the spirit by measure. The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand. He who believes in the Son has everlasting life. And he who does not believe the Son shall not see life. But the wrath of God abides on him. We have a little bit of a problem.
Not really a problem. We have an issue with these verses. There is an issue with these verses. You see, in my Bible, and I don't know if it's so in yours, but I'm guessing it is if we have the same version. I'm noticing that verse 31 begins with quotation marks. Do you have that in your Bible, little quotes?
And then it ends at verse 36. Now that indicates that the one who has been speaking, that is John the Baptist, is continuing to speak. So we would assume in reading this by looking at the quotation marks that John the Baptist is simply continuing his speech after he must increase, I must decrease. John keeps talking all the way down to verse 36, right?
That's the assumption. The issue we have, the problem we have, is it doesn't actually sound like John the Baptist. That is, the style and the grammar sound more like John the Apostle rather than John the Baptist. You look at all the words of John the Baptist recorded in the Bible and match these up to it, especially if you looked in the original language, you would discover that's not John the Baptist. He doesn't talk like that. He doesn't use that kind of sentence construction, syntax, and grammar. But it sounds a lot like John the Apostle.
So why am I making a deal with this? In the original Greek, there are no quotation marks. The original text of the scripture had no quotes like we have in English, in Western language.
So it had to be inserted, and when you insert that, you are making an interpretive statement. You are interpreting that as John the Baptist, right? By the way, do you know that chapters and verses weren't in the original manuscripts? Let alone quotation marks, there weren't like chapter 4, chapter 3, verse 1, verse 2. They didn't come along till 1227 when Stephen Langton, who was the Archbishop of Canterbury, to make things easier, decided to format the Bible so people could find things in it. That's when chapters and verses came along. So the first printing of a Bible that had chapters and verses were in the 1300s. It was the Wycliffe translation of the Bible.
Now, I'll tell you what I believe. I don't believe John the Baptist said these verses at the end. I believe this is John the Apostle, the author of this book's commentary, his editorial comments on chapters 1 through 3, and he's summing them up and saying, here's why Jesus Christ was and is so unique, and this is why so many people believe in him, and this is why you should believe in him. And I told you before in our previous studies that this is one of the marks of John's writing. He will often do this. He'll include a thing, and then he'll kind of sum it up.
He did it at the end of chapter 2, talking about the response in Jerusalem before he turned to Nicodemus in the third chapter. So I believe these are John's comments, and let's just read them again with that in mind. He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth, speaking of John, is earthly and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all. And what he has seen and heard, that he testifies, and no one receives his testimony. He who has received his testimony has certified that God is true.
That's very Johannine. That's very John the Apostle-like in authorship. For he whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God does not give the Spirit by measure. That is, to Jesus. The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand.
He who believes in the Son has everlasting life, and he who does not believe in the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides in him. Thanks for listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig. We hope you've been strengthened in your walk with Jesus by today's program. Before we let you go, we want to remind you about this month's resource that will help you and the children in your life see the timeless story of Christ with fresh eyes.
Nate Heitzig's book, Christmas Under the Tree, with Forward by Levi Lusko, is our thanks for your support of Connect with Skip Heitzig today. Request your copy when you give $25 or more. Call 800-922-1888.
That's 800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate. And did you know that you can find full message series and libraries of content from Skip Heitzig on YouTube? Simply visit the Connect with Skip Heitzig channel on YouTube and be sure to subscribe to the channel so you never miss any new content. Come back next time for more verse-by-verse teaching of God's Word here on Connect with Skip Heitzig. Make a connection Make a connection at the foot Of the cross and Cast your burdens on His word Make a connection Connection Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever-changing times.
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