John 3:26-27 (ESV) And they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness—look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him.”7 John answered, “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven.
Years ago, I used to listen to the Tim and Al Morning Show on KBRT, a Christian talk radio station in Los Angeles. Tim had a very primitive view of Christianity. He took the Bible at face value, and I loved him for it. One morning Tim called other local Christian radio stations asking them to advertize his show on their stations and he would do the same for their shows. Tim thought Christians should work together for the good of God’s kingdom. He was flatly and universally turned down.
Something else Tim did was to call massage parlors in the Los Angeles area with a Bible quiz. He would ask a few Bible questions of the prostitutes or pimps who worked there always ending with “Who created the universe?” If they got it wrong, he would prompt them until they came up with the correct answer. Having answered the question, there won a Christian CD and a Bible which would be sent to them. This way, Tim was able to cause lost soles to think about divine things and place a Christian CD and a Bible in their hands.
Since KBRT was a Christian station, Tim had a fairly narrow listenership, yet he wanted to do all he could with what God had given him. I think we see this same attitude in John the Baptist in the above passage. We also see the wrong way for God’s servants to act.
In the passage above, John’s disciples think this is a competition. Jealousy and pride flare up. They show loudly and clearly their resentment of Jesus’ ministry as it grows in size and importance compared to John’s. They call Jesus “he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness.” They just couldn’t bring themselves to speak even His name.
John then gives us the proper response in verse 30: “He must increase, but I must decrease.”
As I was a young Christian teacher, I had dreams of teaching thousands. In my mind, I was going to be a big deal. That’s the pride of life in case you missed it (1 John 2:16). That was the same attitude displayed by John’s disciples. We think we’re all that and a bag of chips. “We’re the ones God is using. Who does that guy think He is?”
John knew his place, that he was there to magnify our Lord and not himself. For some of us this is a really tough lesson to learn but true. Who we are and how much we are used by God is not for us to say. If God is going to use us, He will use us as He wills and not how we want. Remember it is hard for Him to use us with a prideful attitude. Usually the one standing in the way is us, so if you’re wondering why God isn’t using you, you might look in a spiritual mirror.
John was happy with diminishing numbers. So long as God was using Him, he looked at what God had given him and did his best to glorify God, not himself. This is a hard lesson for us to learn. We want desperately to serve God in a big way no matter what God wants. We look at the twelve disciples of Jesus and realize by the end of the third century ten percent of the Roman World was probably Christian. We want to make a mark like that.
Why is this important?
Ed Kimball was a simple Sunday School teacher, who in 1858 led a Boston shoe clerk to give his life to Christ. The clerk, Dwight L. Moody, became an well known evangelist.
In 1876, D. L. Moody brought to Christ a student named J. Wilbur Chapman after an evangelistic meeting.
Several years later, Chapman, engaged in YMCA work, employed a former baseball player, Billy Sunday, to do evangelistic work. Sunday’s ministry grew, and he ended up sharing the gospel with 80 to 100 million people before his death in 1935. In 1934, Sunday held a revival in Charlotte, N.C.
A group of local men were so enthusiastic afterward that they planned another evangelistic campaign, bringing Mordecai Ham to town to preach. During Ham’s revival November 1, 1934, a young man named Billy Graham heard the Gospel and yielded his life to Christ.
Hundreds of millions of people heard the words of Christ because God used a Sunday School teacher who simply allowed God to use him with what little position he had to talk with a shoe clerk.
I’ve never taught thousands. The largest Sunday School class I’ve taught has been 55, the smallest was 2, but I have seen God change lives. So long as I present myself to God for His use in His work, I shouldn’t feel any more blessed or teach with any less zeal in either case.
“He must increase, and I must decrease.”
It should be tattooed on our foreheads.
Believers Armed and Dangerous 