-Transcript-
00:38 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the café.
00:41 Welcome to the program. Hopefully you’re doing well here today, having a wonderful day and a wonderful week. I’m so excited to be here today as we get into God’s Holy Word.
00:52 Amen. And we are looking at a principle that will change us for the better. Amen.
00:58 If we let it, if we seek to understand it, if we seek the Lord. Amen. Our text verse here today is John 3:30.
01:06 He must increase, but I must decrease. He must increase, but I must decrease. We see in John 3:30 the idea of humility, do we not? And we look at the context of this verse.
01:22 Amen. And it deals with a discussion between the disciples of John and Jews about purification while Jesus’ disciples were baptizing in Judea. And they’re asking John, you know, okay, we’re a little confused because over here is Jesus and his disciples and everyone’s coming to them and they’re being baptized.
01:45 And here you are, you’re baptizing. We want to know about purification. Now, the Jews could have been asking about, you know, does it matter who you’re baptized by? I wonder if they were asking about people that were not Jews being baptized, if that would have been okay.
02:03 Because up to that point, they were living under the law. They were thinking they were the only people. They weren’t understanding God’s program for the Gentiles.
02:12 So they could have been asking about that. They could have been asking to see, John, do you think you’re greater than Jesus? And John helps them understand the order of things, that Jesus is the bridegroom, that John is the friend of the bridegroom, and that believers are the bride of Christ. Amen.
02:39 And John was saying, look, you have a bridegroom. That’s the individual that is getting married. That’s the groom.
02:44 Amen. I recently went to a wedding. A girl in our church is getting married.
02:49 She was marrying a young man that we’re very familiar with. She’d been dating for years. Great young couple, smart couple.
03:02 And seeing the bridegroom, you know, up there in his suit and his excitement, it moved me. I was happy to see the bridegroom. I was not in the wedding.
03:11 I was certainly not being married. I’ve already been married. Amen.
03:16 Married once, that’s enough. Amen. Just sitting there, happy to see him, and joyful for what is taking place, joyful for that union that’s occurring.
03:26 And John is saying that he is not the bride, bridegroom. He’s not the groom. He’s not the bridegroom.
03:33 He’s not the one getting married, but he sees the bridegroom, and he’s happy about it. Amen. Remember, John kicked in the womb of Elizabeth there out of the book of Luke when he was still in the womb, when Elizabeth encounters Mary and Jesus in the womb, and the Spirit then led John to kick.
03:51 And all these years later, John’s seeing Jesus, and he’s thrilled. Amen. And he’s thrilled that the baptism’s taking place, and he’s thrilled that he has a part in it, and he’s happy simply to have a part in it.
04:01 And we wonder, who is Jesus going to be marrying? And that’s the bride of Christ. That’s believers. Amen.
04:10 And so we learn a lot from this. He must increase, but I must decrease. That’s what John said after this discussion here, this idea of us becoming less like ourselves and more like the Lord.
04:24 Amen. And we look at who God is, and we can understand a few things. Number one, God’s order of importance.
04:32 The order as God would have it when it comes to himself is a co-equal trinity, the three-in-one Godhead. Amen. So we understand that you have God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
04:45 Amen. And those three are three individual people that are all one in God. That is the triune God, the three-in-one God.
04:55 We see it in salvation when we look to Jesus who was sent by God the Father, John 3.:6, that God gave his only begotten Son, right? So we look to Jesus, what he did on the cross, that he died for our sins, he shed his precious blood at Calvary, him being sinless, taking on the sin for all mankind on the cross at Calvary and being raised again by God himself three days later. When we look at Jesus, we believe on Jesus, we are then saved and we get the Holy Spirit living within us. Well, that’s the Holy Trinity.
05:31 You have God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and they’re all God. And the order as God would have it for believers is Christ first and then others as yourself. And a lot of people, you know, I was using the acronym when I was preaching this in the service, JOY, right? Jesus first, others second, yourself last.
05:51 That’s what we learned growing up in church. But truly, I actually, and I get that, and that is a good way to live, but you think about it, it actually, we should treat others like ourselves. And so instead of saying that we’re last, we simply should just try to apply how we live for ourselves to others and they would be doing really good.
06:12 Amen. I know if you’re like me, you like to go have a good meal. Amen.
06:19 You want to go enjoy a good meal. Well, if you want to go and buy a good meal for someone else, there you’re treating them pretty good. Hey, you like a good night’s sleep and you desire someone else to have a good night’s sleep.
06:25 You buy yourself a really good mattress. I mean, hey, maybe get one for someone else, you know, on and on down the line. Amen.
06:32 If we just treated others as we treat ourselves, we’d be doing well, this world would be a much, much better place. So Matthew 22, 37 through 39 is scripture that backs up this concept of God’s order of importance for himself. And then also for us, Matthew 22:37-39, Jesus said unto him, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul and with all thy mind.
06:56 This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. And so in light of this order, we should have a humble Christian walk.
07:10 We should have a humble Christian walk. I mean, let’s look here for the next little bit at how this plays out with God. You know, here in Matthew 22:37, it says, Jesus said unto him, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, all thy soul and all thy mind.
07:31 It doesn’t say some of your heart, some of your soul and some of your mind. It doesn’t say 0.01% of your heart, soul and mind. And it mentions the heart here.
07:44 And the heart has been the center of really every message I’ve preached, I think, in the last couple of weeks. So this lines up perfectly. As we believe in God with our hearts, as Romans 10:9-10 tells us to, and we confess with our mouths as we believe with our hearts, we are to live and love God with our heart, with all of it, all our soul and all our mind.
08:05 It’s really hard to do, is it not? You know, if Jesus is first in our lives, then wouldn’t our life be dedicated to Christ and not ourselves? And you may be sitting there listening, saying, duh, yeah. Was that how you’re living? Is that how Christians are living today? Are they dedicated to Christ? How about this? Are they willing to live as Christ live? Is that not what John 3:30 is saying? He must increase, but I must decrease. Well, who was the humblest man to ever live? Jesus Christ, amen.
08:35 He was humble. He was God in the flesh and he condescended himself down unto man. He lived an obedient, humble life.
08:44 I mean, can you imagine having all power, all knowledge and never sinning and living as obedient and humble as Christ lived, as picking the disciples that he did, of entertaining the people that he did, of living, of doing all the miracles that he did and still dealing with accusers and of his own people, his own people accusing him and ridiculing him and eventually plotting to kill him. His own disciples betraying him. That is humility.
09:13 And if we, if Jesus is first in our life, then our lives will be dedicated to Christ. We will be humble in our personal time of worship and praise. We will spend time with God like it matters because we love him with all our heart, soul, and mind in service for God as a good bond slave or soldier.
09:34 You know, the Bible calls us a bond slaves or, you know, slaves, servants of Christ, amen, depending on your translation. I think mine is bond slave. Paul calls himself a prisoner of Christ.
09:47 And so in service of God, we should have that attitude. You know, when the soldier goes off into battle, does the soldier say, I’m king? No, they say the general is in command. I’m just a soldier.
09:58 That needs to be our attitude. We’re not the general, amen. We’re a soldier.
10:00 We take the orders from God and we live those out in our day-to-day lives. And that should come to fruition through humility, through the idea of he must increase and I must decrease. And how about in crucifying the desires of the flesh? We are to crucify the desires of the flesh.
10:16 That means that there’s oftentimes, and this goes right with these messages I’ve been preaching on walking the spirit, not fulfill the lust of the flesh, the idea of the heart, the deepest place of man, believing on God and living that way and loving God out of the heart. The idea that when we get up every day and we go about our day, we will have many desires that are contrary to the way that God wants us to live. We’ll have desires that are selfish, that we should be hoarding things and taking things and on and on.
10:45 That’s not humble. That’s not what God wants us to do. That’s not agape love.
10:51 That’s not sacrificial love. That’s not what Jesus did. Amen.
10:53 So we are to sacrifice those desires on the cross. We are to crucify them on the cross. We are to get rid of the lust of the flesh, all these things like pride and coveting, envy, strife, evil speaking, evil talking, all these things.
11:10 2 Corinthians 13:5. Examine yourselves, whether you be in the faith, prove your own selves. Know you not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates. And so if we know God, then we should know that we’ve been saved.
11:25 If we know we’ve been saved, we know that we have the Holy Spirit living within us, as I illustrated earlier, that we get the Holy Spirit when we’re saved. If we know that God is a triune God, the three-in-one God, now we know that God is living within us. This is the idea.
11:38 You’ll hear preachers say the church is within you. That’s the idea of that there. Holy Spirit living within us.
11:45 So we need to examine ourselves and make sure that we understand the Holy Spirit’s living within us if we’ve been saved. And believers here today, if you’ve been saved, don’t grieve the Holy Spirit. Don’t live in sin.
11:55 Don’t have willful ignorance or so-and-so made me do it or whatever it is. God knows better, and he knows that you know better. And so let’s get right with God.
12:06 He didn’t come to bring misery to your life. He came to bring joy and peace to your life. If something was good for you, God would want you to do it.
12:10 But if it’s not good for you, he’s telling you to stay away from it. And so why you keep going back to that is not your godly will, but it’s your fleshly desire. And when we crucify those desires of the flesh, and we take humility upon us as Christ had in his life, and we have that mind of Christ, as the Bible says, to look at ourselves as not greater than another, but lower than another.
12:34 To look at ourselves and say, he must increase, but I must decrease. To look at ourselves and say, thy will be done, not my will be done. When we look at ourselves in that light, then truly, we can do something for God.
12:46 We can have peace in our life. Amen. This is the ironies. People think in order to be happy, they need to have a bunch of whatever, attention, stuff, whatever it is.
12:55 And God is telling us here, you want peace? You want perfect peace? Keep your mind on me. Trust me. Love me.
13:01 Worship me. Serve me. And you’ll have peace like you’ve never had in your life.
13:06 That’s what God tells us in his word over and over again. People want to make his word out to be something where it’s, oh, you know, a bunch of rules, and it’s not fun. It’s crazy.
13:19 The most fun you can have as a Christian, Amen. The most joy you can have as a Christian. When you realize the true freedom you have in Christ, talk about ironic, we are slaves to the Lord, amen? We’re prisoners of Christ, yet we have more freedom than lost people, because we’re not under the bondage of sin. We’re the freest people there is, amen? And we have eternity at hand, Amen. Our name’s been written down in the Lamb’s Book of Life, never to be blotted out, never to be erased, all because Christ died for us, because he was obedient on the cross.
13:41 Therefore, we should be obedient in our lives. And we should say, he must increase, but I must decrease. And as we do that, we go about that exercise throughout all parts of our life, we will experience God’s great peace and joy in our life like we haven’t before.
13:56 And that’s not me saying it, that’s God’s word, amen? That’s God’s promise to us here today, to enact this humility in our life in a culture that tells us not to, to do it anyways.
14:07 I thank you for listening. Tune in next time as we get deeper into this message about him increasing and us decreasing.
14:13 Again, thank you so much for listening. Take care, God bless, and Amen.